Jack Animam's love for basketball started at the principal's office

Yes, you heard it right. Jack Danielle Animam was not thinking of hoops and buckets from the get go.

The first-ever women’s ambassador of the Samahang Basketbol ng Pilipinas was Bea Daez’s buenamano on the debut of Women In Charge Friday evening straight from Taiwan, and the Gilas’ resident big woman told her that basketball was actually not her first sport growing up.

Animam said, “At first talaga, I wasn’t really into basketball. I was a badminton player back then.”

The lefty was fond of the world’s fastest racket sport until her high school freshman year, but allergies sidelined her for two months.

After she recovered, she took on basketball, but not before a marathon talk at her school’s principal’s office.

The answer was simple: Jack was just too tall. And in basketball, size matters.

She admitted her hesitation about it, because for her the sport in the country was just exclusive to men back then.

“Matangkad lang talaga ako, wala talaga akong alam sa basketball,” she then said, adding that her first trainings with their team were learning pains soon afterward.

“Malaki lang ako. Banban ako. Hindi talaga ako marunong,” she exclaimed.

But the persuasion and persistence of her high school principal soon paid off, as she went to NU and made her name for herself as she was one of the key women of the Lady Bulldogs’ unbeaten dominance.

Her winning mentality after winning five straight UAAP crowns with an unbeaten 80-0 record were carried to Taiwan, where she helped Shih Hsin retain the UBA diadem, capping off her collegiate career with a spotless 96-game winning streak.

Not only that, she was already a multi-year veteran in the national team under her college coach Pat Aquino, as it transitioned from the last years of the Perlas program until its reboot under the Gilas name just last 2019, where it got its cherished golden double at the country’s SEA Games homestand.

For a tall lass from Bulacan, the conversations with her principal about changing sports came a long way.

FILE PHOTO: FIBA