The Tribune

By RENALDO DORSETT

Tribune Sports Reporter

rdorsett@tribunemedia.net

WALTIEA Rolle officially made her return to professional basketball and leads her club in a newly formed tournament to encourage competition between teams in Spain.

Rolle posted her first double double for her CAB Estepona Jardín club in the LF Challenge Tournament in the Spanish women’s basketball system. The LF Challenge features teams from the Liga Femenina Endesa and Liga Femenina 2 - the top two leagues in the country.

The veteran centre finished with 14 points and 13 rebounds in her team’s 87-63 win over Advisoria Mataro Maresme.

After playing sparingly in her first two appearances with the club earlier this month, Rolle posted 15 points, eight rebounds and three blocked shots in her team’s 82-70 loss to Celta Zorka. She is currently averaging 7.3 points, 5.3 rebounds and two blocks per game through four contests.

The 16 teams in the LF Challenge are competing for two places of promotion to the elite of Spanish women’s basketball.

It includes two teams that have been relegated from the LF Endesa and the 14 promoted from the LF2 from the previous season. The first place finisher will be promoted directly to LF Endesa, while the last two teams will be relegated to LF2.

“It serves as an example of our strength and the strength of women’s basketball that next season we will have a new division, the Challenge League that the competition demanded and that comes to equal the three competitions that men’s basketball has,” said Jorge Garbajosa, president of the FEB.

A 2013 graduate of North Carolina, Rolle owns two of the top 10 best shot-blocking seasons in school history. Her 89 blocks during the 2013 campaign stand are the sixth best of all-time and her 82 blocks in the 2011 season eighth in North Carolina history.

Rolle made Bahamian basketball history as the first Bahamian drafted into the WNBA when the Minnesota Lynx selected her with a third-round pick (36th overall) in the 2013 draft. She appeared in all three pre-season games with the team, averaging seven points, 4.3 rebounds and one steal per game. In six games with the Storm in 2014, Rolle averaged 3.2 points and 2.8 rebounds per game.

Her professional career has also included stops in Bulgaria, China, the Czech Republic and Turkey.

She played with Nymburk, of the Czech Republic’s ZBL League, where she averaged 16.3 points and 10.4 rebounds in 31 games. She followed with Haskovo in Bulgaria’s NBL league where she averaged 13.9 points and 12.3 rebounds per game.

Following a brief stint with the Xianjiang Magic Deer, of the Chinese Women’s Basketball Association, she spent four months in the Turkish second division with Edremit Belediyes Gurespor and averaged 15.3 points along with 9.6 rebounds and 2.1 blocks per game.