Rising junior Olivia Miles ’21 will compete for USA Basketball this summer as part of the U16 team, making her the latest in a long line of Blair girls’ basketball team members who have competed or are currently competing on the world stage. Olivia was one of 146 players nationwide invited to the U.S. Olympic Training Center in Colorado Springs to participate in tryouts for the U16 team, and she was named to the 12-member squad on May 30.

“Olivia is a strong student, an electrifying and unselfish basketball player, and, more importantly, a humble and compassionate person who adds a great deal to the Blair community,” said head girls’ varsity coach Quinten Clarke ’87. “She would rather pass than score, and this makes her very popular with her teammates. She's a great representative of both Blair Academy and the United States.”

Olivia, who is ESPN’s #2 ranked basketball player nationally in the class of 2021, will travel to Puerto Aysen, Chile, to compete in the 2019 FIBA Americas U16 Championship from June 16 to 22. The top four finishers among the eight national teams in the competition will qualify for the 2020 FIBA U17 World Cup that will take place in Cluj-Napoca, Romania.

Olivia joins the following Blair girls’ basketball alumnae in international play

Camille Clarin ’19 made the Philippines’ national women’s U18 team this year and competed in Mongolia from June 3 to 7 in the 2019 FIBA 3x3 U18 World Cup. The team qualified for the second round of play in stunning fashion, as it defeated the Netherlands on Camille’s buzzer-beating shot and then later beat the Czech Republic in overtime. Camille will attend Hamilton College this fall, where she will play for the Continentals.

Thuraya Abdul-Hamid ’19 is training with the Jordanian national team this summer in an effort to make the team. She heads to American University in the fall. 

Onome Akinbode-James ’18, a former member of the Nigerian U16 team, currently plays for the Duke University women’s basketball team. 

Batouly Camara ’15 is playing in Africa for the Guinea national women’s basketball team. In 2019-2020, she will play her senior season for the University of Connecticut Huskies.

Sami Hill ’13 made Canada Basketball’s senior women’s national team for 2019, and she will play in a five-game European exhibition tour in Belgium (June 14-16) and Great Britain (June 18-19). A 2017 graduate of Virginia Tech, Sami played on the Canadian women’s national team that competed in the 2018 Asia Exhibition series in China and Japan. She is a professional basketball player in Germany.

Annette Snow ’12 plays professional basketball for team Ashdod in Israel. She is a 2016 graduate of Lafayette College.

Temi Fagbenle ’11 played for Great Britain’s women’s basketball team in the 2012 Olympics and is currently a member of Great Britain’s FIBA EuroBasket team that is competing in Latvia and Serbia from June 27 to July 7. During her college years, she played at Harvard University and the University of Southern California. She was drafted by the WNBA’s Minnesota Lynx in 2016 and will join the team following her international stint.