Minium: ODU Alumni Stepping Up to Help Former Women's Basketball Star Clarisse Machanguana

By Harry Minium

NORFOLK, Va. – When her basketball career ended in 2014, Clarisse Machanguana had a choice. She could find her way into the private business world, perhaps in America or Europe, and make a ton of money.

Or she could go home to her native Mozambique and work to help young girls there escape poverty.

Given her background, it was an easy decision for Machanguana.

She was scooped up by a Portuguese basketball team as a teenager and played a couple of years in Europe before heading off to Old Dominion University, where she became a star. She then went on to play in the WNBA and on the international stage.

“My life changed so much because of basketball,” she said. “It helped save my life.

“I knew it would be a crime for me not to go home and try to help.”

So, 11 years ago she established the Clarisse Machanguana Foundation, which has helped tens of thousands of young people, especially young girls, escape poverty.

But now, it is Machanguana who needs help.

Her home was engulfed in the record flooding that left 700,000 people homeless and more than 100 dead over the last week in Mozambique.

Machanguana’s home, just south of capital city of Maputo, was almost a total loss. There was standing water in the house for five days. Two days after the flooding began to recede, she had to hire a fisherman to take her to her house in his boat.

CLICK HERE for video of Machanguana's home

When she hopped off the boat to inspect her house, her 6-foot-5 frame was totally covered in water. She had to climb a fence to see her house.

“When I looked inside, I saw the freezer was floating,” she said during a telephone interview on Thursday. “I was just in shock.”

She lost nearly everything, her furniture, clothes, appliances and family heirlooms, including pictures, trophies and keepsakes. Everything in the house was broken, even the kitchen shelves, from the force of the water entering her home, or ruined.  

Little could be salvaged.

“The worst thing is the smell,” Machanguana said.

“Everything has to come out of the house. The plumbing and electricity are gone. The house has to be naked and then we start from zero. It’s not like building a new house, but it will be almost as costly.”

And because she has spent the last 11 years doing charity work, she is not a rich woman.

Enter Ticha Penicheiro, the former ODU All-American who was Machanguana’s teammate both in Portugal and at ODU.

She convinced Machanguana to begin a GoFundMe page, and with very little promotion, it has raised more than $24,000 in less than a week.

Much more will be needed to restore her house.

“The good thing is that my kids are not here,” she said of daughter, Ester Machanguana, and son, Luca Ambrosi. Both are studying abroad.

For the time being, Machanguana is living with her brother. Meanwhile, family members got her measurements and went to seamstresses to make her new clothes – all of her clothes are gone.

She has been overwhelmed with the response from the international sports community.

More than 65 people have donated, including Martina Remler, the former Austrian women’s basketball star, who has the largest donation so far at $3,058.

CLICK HERE to donate to Clairsse Machanguana Go Fund Me

Many who donated have ODU ties, and with good reason. Machanguana was one of ODU’s best all-time women’s basketball players. She and Penicheiro led ODU to a 34-2 record and a berth in the 1997 national championship game, in which the Monarchs fell to Tennessee.

Machanguana led ODU in field goal percentage each year she played and she scored 1,813 points. The Lady Monarchs were 88-11 in her three seasons in Norfolk.

In 2006, she was inducted into the ODU Sports Hall of Fame.

Former ODU players Nancy Lieberman, Mery Andrade and Hamchetou Maiga-Ba have all contributed, as did Allison Greene, Debbie Harmison White and Susan Montgomery, who worked as coaches or in media relations with the women’s team.

Former ODU men’s basketball player Cal Bowdler made a donation as did Kelly Krauskopf, who is president of basketball and business operations for the Indiana Fever of the WNBA.

“People have been so awesome,” Machanguana said. “Ticha encouraged me to create the GoFundMe account.

“I was very reluctant. This didn’t just happen to me. It happened to the entire community. It feels wrong. Most of the people here have nothing.

“But I know that I am so lucky to have such a strong sports community take care of me.”

The problems that Machanguana has been working to fix in Mozambique are gigantic and she acknowledges that one foundation can’t fix it all.

Located on the Indian Ocean, just across the Mozambique Channel from Madagascar, the country is poverty stricken and its population is exploding. A former Portuguese colony, the country gained its independence in 1975, but remains underdeveloped, with more than 80 percent of the population existing on $3 per day.

Machanguana’s foundation is focused largely on trying to lift young girls out of poverty and that is a mammoth task, for Mozambique has a huge gender gap.

More than 50 percent of girls, starting at age 11, are forced into marriage. Only one percent of girls go to college and nearly half of all girls drop out of school by the fifth grade.

Her foundation works with schools to encourage girls to stay enrolled in school and stay single until they are adults. It sponsors courses on STEM skills – science, technology, engineering and math – and more than 6,000 young girls have taken those classes.

Tens of thousands of young women participate in basketball camps designed to lift their self-esteem and teach them teamwork and self-discipline.

“My children like to tell me that I’ve chosen a career that will make me poor,” she said. “There’s no such thing as getting rich when you lead a foundation.

“No, my pockets don’t get filled. But my spirit gets filled every day.”

Machanguana had a stellar career after ODU. She played four seasons in the WNBA and another in the American Basketball League. She continued her career in Africa and helped lead her country to third and second place finishes in the African national games.

On April 21, she will be inducted into the Fédération Internationale de Basketball (FIBA) Hall of Fame in Berlin, Germany.

She hopes her home will be refurbished by then.

“It’s very hard to still call it my home,” she said. “The first few days I was saying ‘I’m happy to be alive’ and I’m still happy to be alive. But it’s still very hard.

“It's a lifetime of memories that vanished. 

"It all made realize two things. Whatever we accumulate, we don't take it with us whenever we leave this life. It also taught me the most important thing is to be healthy. Everything else passes.

“Despite the tragedy, I'm so grateful I'm alive and that my family is OK. And eventually, we're going to rebuild.”

With a little hlep from her friends. 

Minium is ODU's Senior Executive Writer for Athletics. Contact him at hminium@odu.edu or follow him on Twitter, Facebook or Instagram

To see past stories from Minium, CLICK HERE