At a sports stadium in Hong Kong, basketball players, all dripping with sweat, run across a court to the soundtrack of screeching sneakers.
The two-hour training session is intense – but it has to be. The goal for these athletes is to join the Women’s National Basketball Association (WNBA) in the United States, and the players’ backstories make their ambitions even more impressive.
The players are part of the Strive Gold Team, a programme that provides Hong Kong’s top female basketball players with free coaching and support to access educational opportunities for scholarships to US schools.
Operated by the Strive Foundation, a Hong Kong-based non-profit organisation, the programme’s main mission is to use basketball to better the lives of its players and their families.
Hong Kong player Yannie Chan (right) is the first Strive Gold Team graduate and the first locally schooled Hong Kong woman to play basketball for an NCAA team. Photo: Brian Ching
Leading the training session is coach William Lo Wing-kwan, who co-founded the foundation in 2019 with his partner, Angela Wong On-ying, to provide underprivileged girls with a path to college and global experiences.
“The foundation is a vehicle to further these girls’ education and better their lives, so one day they can help their families,” says Hongkonger Lo, who at 15 got a life-changing opportunity to play college basketball in the US.