Lumabi heads Down Under for basketball coaching program

Marlene Lumabi, center, coach for the NMI U17 Girls National Basketball Team, is in Australia for the Marty Handson Scholarship Program in which she will undergo coaching training that will entail shadowing an Australian basketball team. (CONTRIBUTED PHOTO)

Marlene Lumabi, member of the Northern Mariana Islands Basketball Federation board of directors and coach for the U17 Girls National Team, is in Melbourne, Australia for FIBA Oceania’s Coach Education Program—the Marty Handson Scholarship Program in partnership with Basketball Victoria.

The 27-year-old coach, who also trains with the CNMI Senior National Basketball program, landed yesterday, July 6, into the winter season in the Land Down Under for the program designed to help prepare coaches for upcoming tournaments in Oceania.

The program only selected two coaches out of 19 active coaches in the region that were nominated by their respective federations—one from Tonga named Siale Bain-Vet and Lumabi herself.

Lumabi, who has been training in the three-month program online for the past month and a half, will head back home from her hands-on training on July 18.

The program is set into two phases—with the second phase she will undergo shadowing a National Basketball League 1 coach in an Australian-based local basketball association. 

Over the course of her program, she will learn leadership and mindset, offensive concepts and style of play, defensive schemes, and concepts, planning, scouting, game play and coaching, strength and condition, physical and mental recovery, and nutrition.

Lumabi said in an interview on her transit to Australia that she is “ready to learn new techniques to bring back home! Very excited and open-minded.”

She is most looking forward to learning new strategies for both practice and games. “In addition, I’m eager to observe basketball players of all ages to see how they are treated both on and off the court,” she said.

On the opportunity to train in the program, she said “Receiving the Marty Handson scholarship is an honor and a blessing. I’m excited and eager to learn new things and deepen my knowledge of basketball. I’m also looking forward to hearing from other coaches about the experiences they had and the difficulties they overcame.”

The program was named after former head coach Marty Handson from Victoria County, Australia, who passed away in 2016. He was involved in the development of athletes and coaches across all levels of the basketball community and his program supports empowering national federations through boosting grassroots programs, enabling access to coaching development across the region.