Lese Oalai lass teaches skills at home

By JACK AMI
FORMER Australian Opals basketball star Annie La Fleur is the new FIBA Oceania development manager.
La Fleur, 43, of mixed Dutch and Gulf parentage, was recruited last month by FIBA Oceania general secretary Steve Smith to develop basketball in the Pacific zone.
As an Australian player, she represented that country in two World Championships and the 2000 Olympics in Sydney, where the Opals won a silver.
She was born in Port Moresby on Nov 3, 1969, to a Lese Oalai woman, Maureen Miro, the cousin sister of PNG Men’s Basketball League commissioner Larry Miro Junior and lived at Hohola One until she was nine-years-old, when the family left for Australia.
She first played for Australia when she was 23, racking up 137 games in 10 years.
She played four years of professional basketball in the US Women’s National Basketball Association (WNBA) with Minnesota Lynx for a year and the Washington Mystics for three years.
This is her first official visit under FIBA Oceania to PNG.
Basketball Federation president Nick Daroa said  “We are privileged that La Fleur will actively help us develop the code in PNG and move forward and beyond as planned by the federation executives.”