Arike
Ogunbowale
United States
·
Basketball
Date of birth | 2 March 1997 |
|---|---|
Place of birth | Milwaukee, Wisconsin |
Age | 28 |
Nationality | United States |
Disciplines | 5x5 Basketball |
WNBA star point guard Arike Ogunbowale doesn’t remember a time in her life when sports wasn’t everything. She became a WNBA scoring champion before she turned 24. And she’s not done shooting for higher heights.
Growing up in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, Arike is the product of a Nigerian-American family with sports in their DNA. “She was the best softball player in the state,” Ogunbowale said about her mother. “I think her competitive nature and her drive as an athlete definitely rubbed off on me and she instilled those types of qualities in me.”
Arike joined Divine Savior Holy Angels High School’s basketball team in 2011 and helped the program capture the 2015 Division 1 state championship after scoring 55 points in the semifinal game, the most points ever scored in a Wisconsin high school tournament game.
In college, she drained 2,340 points in four seasons making her the all-time leading scorer in Notre Dame Fighting Irish women’s 44-year history. Of all those points, three cemented her place in college basketball lore forever after she hit a falling fadeaway three-point buzzer beater in the 2018 NCAA Division I Women's Basketball Championship Game winning the Notre Dame Fighting Irish women’s basketball team only its second-ever national title as a junior.
For Arike, it was natural. “I would finish workouts with just fade threes. I would go around and when I got to the corner I was fading 3s, hitting 5 in a row.”
The Dallas Wings selected her with the fifth overall selection in the 2019 WNBA draft and it didn’t take long before Arike made her presence felt. By the end of her second season, her 22.8 points per game made her one of the youngest WNBA scoring champions ever.
Now, she's just reached a significant record in WNBA history by tying Diana Taurasi as the fastest player to reach 500 career three-pointers, accomplishing this feat in just 198 games. This also made her the first player in Dallas Wings franchise history to reach the 500 three-pointer milestone.
While she wants to become the best player ever at her position, she also wants to help raise the next generation of basketball talents. She has begun this goal already by holding training camps in Milwaukee to inspire the youth to pursue their basketball dreams.
“I want to show young girls that women have a place to make money and have fun in this sport, and that’s exciting. I try to implement that fun in my game and let it be fun for kids to watch, so they keep on that path.”
She aims to spend more quality time in the land of her heritage, Nigeria, which she has never went to growing up because of her relentless pursuit of basketball greatness: "Whenever I am able to take a break, I for sure want to take a couple of weeks in Nigeria, go there for the community and see the country.”