Kenya's basketball player Linet Atieno Juma is hitting headlines for all the right reasons after emerging the top student in her class during the 2018 Texas University College.
Atieno got a perfect GPA score of 4.0 upon completion of her scholarship and was also the first Texas College basketball player to register 1000 career rebounds and points in the National Athletics Intercollegiate Association (NAIA) games during her time at the college.
She is a former Shimba Hills netball and basketball player and helped the school to cement its place as a sports powerhouse by winning back-to-back national and regional titles between 2010 and 2013.
[caption caption="Photo of Linet Juma"]
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“When I joined Shimba Hills in 2010, I didn’t know about basketball because my speciality was netball, but I slowly got interested in basketball and this is how far the sport has taken me,” she was quoted by Nation Sport.
Her former colleague at Shimba Hills Taudencia Katumbi, with whom they went to USA in 2015 through the help of former Kenya internationals Alice Onono and Sophie Mohammed, will graduate from Abilene Christian College next weekend.
Their achievements are proof that sports does not necessarily interfere with academics and a perfect balance between the two can be struck.
Celebrated Kenyan footballer Michael Olunga is another example of an achiever both on and off the pitch as he performed exemplary well during his KCSE examinations at Upper Hill school and gained admission to the Technical University of Kenya to study Geospatial Engineering.
Olunga is currently playing for Girona FC in the Spanish La Liga and made his debut on 13 January 2018 against Las Palmas.
He scored a hat-trick (three goals) in a span of 22 minutes in a 6–0 win, becoming both the first Kenyan player and the first Girona player to score a hat-trick in La Liga.
Prior to this, he played for Swedish side Djurgårdens IF and went on to become the fifth best goal scorer in the league.
[caption caption="Michael Olunga"]
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