Jack Danielle Animam has just won her sixth collegiate title in Taiwan.
She has never lost a collegiate game, winning all 78 games she saw action in with the National University (NU) Lady Bulldogs in the UAAP and then going 18-0 with Taiwan’s Shi Hsin University Tigers.
Those feats alone are not how Animam wants her college life to be defined.
“I’m waiting for my proposal paper to be approved,” the former National University ace told the Inquirer.
If her paper gets approved and she completes her thesis, Animam will bring home more than just hardware from Chinese Taipei. The 22-year-old cager is also at SHU to earn a master’s degree in public relations.
“I played basketball because I wanted to have better education,” she said. “I kept on playing so I could keep on studying.”
“I really wanted to do my masters at NU, but they didn’t have Masters in Business Administration … So this opportunity in Taiwan gave me a chance to take another (masters) course that I wanted. So it really felt it was meant to be,” she added.
Animam revealed that she is looking to pair her master’s degree with her basketball know-how to further promote the women’s game.
She is the brightest star in women’s basketball right now, and she wants to create for herself a bigger voice.
“I think I could use this to further promote women’s basketball,” she said. “[To] create more platforms where we could showcase the women’s game.”
There’s no denying that Animam has been doing a pretty fine job of promoting women’s basketball through her actions, which speak the loudest. But there’s also denying that women’s basketball will need more than just the heroics of its 6-foot-5 warrior to crack mainstream conversation.
So she’s doing her best to play her way into visibility while learning how to make her presence count.
And having won the title with the Tigers, she can ease up on basketball until they have to defend their crown next season.
And as she plunges into offseason training, she also gets more time to complete her requirements—and is aiming to be as successful with that, too.
“That’s one of my wishes,” she said.