Twenty-year-old Rwandan female combo-guard Sifa Joyeuse Ineza seems poised to become one of the players that the national team may rely on in the future. Born and raised in Musanze, Northern Province, Ineza is enjoying a rapid rise in her basketball career. She has established herself as a key player for the national team since she was given her first call up. She first represented Rwanda in 2018 when she was called up for U-18 national team duty and her incredible skills on the ball saw her eventually named in the senior national team later on. The US-based Rwandan basketball prodigy was exposed to sports at a tender age as she grew up watching her siblings playing soccer. “There was a basketball court right next to where my brother used to play, and I would watch people play pickup games,” she told Times Sport in an exclusive interview. That’s how she started getting acquainted with basketball, though she did not instantly fall in love with the game until she was 14. “I wanted to be a basketball player. Honestly, there is no specific reason to why I chose basketball, it just seemed like a really cool and clean game to me. I wouldn’t say it was always my dream because I barely knew it in my young age,” she noted. As a teenager, Ineza joined Lycée de Kigali and played for their school team, before joining The Hoops in the national Women’s Basketball League. She played for the club until she was in 2019 offered a sports scholarship to Green Forest Christian Academy, a school located in the state of Georgia, the United States. She had been studying while also playing for the college as either a shooting guard and point guard positions. In her senior season of high school, she averaged 15.6 points per game while shooting 53 percent from the field and averaging 1.3 steals per game on the defensive end. In 2021, Ineza joined Florida International University (FIU) on a 4-year scholarship, and she is playing there until now. Upon joining, Jesyka Burks-Wiley, the head coach of FIU’s basketball team described her as “a young woman that has continually impressed us with her growth on and off the court over the last year.” She added that Sifa “fits our system incredibly well and is going to help us continue to move closer to hanging a banner in the Ocean Bank (Convocation Center).” Representing Rwanda: Ineza describes her debut in the national felt like her basketball career was elevating, especially when she got selected to play for the U-18 national team in 2018. “It felt surreal putting on the Rwanda jersey for the first time. It is such a priceless thing to me that I never take for granted,” she told Times Sport. It’s a story that she enjoys telling when she reflects on the day she got summoned for the senior national team, and hence became part of the squad that represented Rwanda at the Afrobasket qualifiers in 2021. “The experience in the national team has been amazing so far. I get to learn from the veterans who have played this game for quite some time and I simply enjoy the moment I spend with the team. I think everyone on the national team is cool!” she recalls. “Different personalities (on the team), lots of funny people, man it’s just a vibe whenever we are together. I have been friends with some of the players on the team way before we were all selected,” she added. For her, lifting the Rwandan flag is something she always wants to do with her teammates. On club level, Ineza is having a good time at FIU as well. “The chemistry with my teammates on and off the court is incredibly amazing and the coaching staff is great. So that made it easier for me to be able to adapt to the school,” she noted. She is always inspired when she looks back and sees where she has come from. Ineza says her family has always been supportive to her basketball career in a way or another although they rarely watch her playing from the stands. To her, staying away from her family remains something that she still struggles to take. “Not having them in the stands watching me play is the difficult thing I deal with every single day.”
