Omokore preps for off-floor life
UCF power forward Tolulope Omokore has made a name for herself in the American Athletic Conference as a strong rebounder, but the junior knows the ball is going to stop bouncing soon.
As a result, she’s making plans for her life beyond the court.
“Basketball isn’t going to be here forever, so I have to have a degree to fall back on,” Omokore told a group of middle and high school students at Camp Orlando, a journalism camp in Orlando that draws 400 students.
Omokore put up rugged stats last season. She scored a career-high 20 points against Georgia Southern, a game during which she also had 11 rebounds. Known as a board-crasher, she surpassed 100 rebounds last season.
But she’s also seen other numbers and knows how they add up: Collegiate women basketball players only have a 0.9 percent chance of turning pro, according to NCAA statistics.
As much as she loves basketball, the WNBA or even playing overseas professionally is not likely to be in her future.
She got her first taste of life without basketball earlier than expected, with an injury sidelining her for all of this season.
In addition to recovering from her injury and cheering on her teammates as they prepare to host rival USF at noon Sunday to help determine second place in the AAC, Omokore is chasing big dreams off the court.
“Tolu,’’ as her teammates and friends call her, is studying and training to score in the world of sports marketing, with the ultimate goal of working for shoe giant Nike.
She latched onto marketing as a career choice as a freshman when she attended UCF’s annual Relay for Life cancer fundraiser. She spotted a group of girls selling cookies and noticed not too many people stopping by their table to buy them. Omokore, who is 5 feet, 11 inches of exuberance, walked over and started helping the girls draw more customers. She shouted to passers-by, cracked jokes and cajoled people into giving the girls’ cookies a chance. Thanks to Omokore, they raised more money for the charity.
“I was out there getting in people’s faces, telling them ‘two-for-a-dollar, these cookies are good!’ People were giving me money and telling me to keep the cookies because they liked my energy,” Omokore said. “And a light bulb just came on in my head, ‘Hey, I’m good at this.’ So that’s when I started thinking I wanted to be in marketing. Can y’all believe that cookies did it? Cookies inspired me.”
Omokore is now majoring in sports business management with a minor in communication and is also a marketing intern for the UCF athletics department. She has worked with the human resources office and the corporate sales staff to gain knowledge of all facets of the operation.
“My staff and I are really passionate about empowering our women and helping them prepare for the next 55 years of their life after basketball,” UCF women’s basketball coach Katie Abrahamson-Henderson said. “There are so many opportunities for them at UCF . ... Tolu has really taken that to heart and is aggressively exploring as many opportunities as possible for her future.”
UCF’s Student-Athlete Welfare and Development Department partners with local business leaders to prepare athletes for work in the business world. Events like the department’s “Networking Knights” train athletes in networking, interviewing, dressing professionally and writing résumés and cover letters.
Omokore plans to take advantage of every opportunity at UCF, hoping to earn a spot in the DeVos Sport Business Management graduate program.
“I want to be the person to go out to events and to different states and talk to people because I love interacting with people,’’ Omokore said.