After clinching a bronze medal at the 2016 FIBA-Africa Zone V Club Championships in Dar-es-Salaam, Tanzania, Ubumwe women basketball club have set their eyes on becoming one of the top teams in the region.

Ubumwe, who were established in March of 2012, made their second appearance at the regional tournament that climaxed last weekend where they finished third, behind Kenya’s Kenya Ports Authority (KPA) and United States International University (USIU).

"We are very pleased with our general performance at FIBA-Africa Zone V Championships, although we failed to achieve our target to qualify for the African Championships, we displayed great performances despite the unfavourable schedule we had,” said head coach Jacques Bahige.

The women category comprised of seven clubs playing each other on a round robin format. KPA finished top with eleven points, one ahead of United States International University (USIU) while Ubumwe finished third and Uganda Christian University Canons came in fourth place.

Despite Ubumwe finishing with a better point difference (63 points) compared to UCU (54 pts) and USIU (12 pts), the technical committee considered the head-to-head between the three clubs, which gave USIU an upper hand in the final rankings.

"We are ambitious and winners, and in every tournament we want to do better, hopefully this experience will help us keep improving; our target is to become one of the top teams in the region,” Bahige added.

Ubumwe made their national league debut during the 2013/14 season and have gone on to win 10 trophies including the league title 2014/15, two playoff titles 2014/15 and 2015/16, two pre-season titles 2013/14 and 2014/15, three Gisembe memorial national titles 2013/14, 2014/15 and 2015/16.

Others include; the 2015/16 Hero’s Day and the 2016 International Women’s Day tournaments.

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