“You never can tell what the future holds, but I knew basketball is a game I wanted to play and a game I wanted to be very good at.”, Flirsh said when asked if she could ever have imagined a girl of the 5 feet 6 stature becoming the Greatest Of All Time to play the game.
Flavia Oketcho boasts of a whooping twelve (12) National titles which she won with the Lady Bucks, the UCU Lady Canons, KCCA Leopards and recently with the JKL Dolphins. Flirsh won a whooping six titles with the Lady Bucks an organization she says set her on the trajectory of what she eventually became.
While on the DoubleDown Live Show on Friday night, Oketcho gave an exclusive of how she accidentally became a Lady Bucks player because her team Amazon Rhino had ditched her. Flirsh had first fallen for the game while at Kitante Primary School when she saw the likes of the legendary Stephen Omony play the game at Kitante Hill School. Flirsh would eventually join Kitante Hill School – a high school basketball power house at the time. But she revealed that her intention was never to start at Lady Bucks. In fact, for about two months, she had been practicing with Amazon Rhino – a team that had several players she looked up to at that time. Flirsh mentions Angella Lokidi and Amelia as some of elite players at Amazon Rhino that had asked her to join the team while at Kitante Hill.
“Those days, it wasn’t how it is now were teams are friends, you can see me seated with a player from UCU Lady Canons and we’re chatting after the game. Back in the day, when you belonged to a team, even saying Hi to a player from another team was considered treason.” – Flirsh.
On her supposed first game day with Amazon Rhino, the games were meant to be away in Jinja some 80 kilometers away from the capital Kampala and teams were supposed to meet at YMCA Wandegeya. But Flirsh wasn’t quite aware that she was supposed to carry her own facilitation for transport and meals. She hadn’t asked her parents either for the facilitation so Amazon Rhino opted to leave her behind.
“We were supposed to leave for Jinja at 7:30 AM, I was at the YMCA at 6:30 AM.” – Flirsh
“The Amazon bus left and some of them (players) waved at me”, she narrates. Surrounded by an air of melancholy, she sat at a canteen near YMCA pondering what her next move was going to be and suddenly The Lady Bucks Patron and senior player at the time Ms Susan Kafumbe Mukasa notices her and invites her to travel with the Lady Bucks to Jinja in the comfort of their spacious bus. Arriving in Jinja on the enemy bus, she was instantly black-balled by the Amazon Rhino. Flirsh would end up winning half a dozen WNBL titles with the Lady Bucks.
Flirsh credits Susan Kafumbe Mukasa as the greatest influence on her both on the basketball court and off the basketball court.
“Susan was my greatest mentor. Not only the way she played basketball but also how she put us as women in shape. She would take you on as a mother, talk to you about life, about hygiene and about everything. It’s something that groomed me even up to now.” Flirsh tells about Susan Kafumbe Mukasa.
Flirsh also recounts her privilege of playing with legendary players like Penninah Kabenge, the President of the Africa University Sports Federation, FASU, the Deen of Sports at Makerere University and winner of the first FUBA Lifetime Achievement Award. Flirsh also played with Coach Harriet Lubowa as well as Ref Imelda.
You can watch the entire Episode of the DoubleDown Show with Flirsh in the embed below.
By Cucu Brian | Tweet me: @cucubrian.
Watch Full Episode here below:
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