Wolves Coaching Team in place!

Oaklands College Wolves are delighted to announce our performance coaching team for the 2023/24 season.

Headlined by the return of Coach Lee Ryan to our Women's British Basketball League side after spending the past two years with our mens National Basketball League team. He will be joined in the women's program by Claire Abbott, who returns to Oaklands to lead the WEABL and head coach our new NBL women's division 2 team. On the men's side we have added experienced coach Jozef Butor who will head coach our mens NBL division 2 side whilst working with exciting new Coach Fatih Karahan who will lead our EABL program and head coach the new NBL division 3 men's team.

Head of Performance Lee Ryan led the franchise through their first five years in the WBBL. In those five years coach Ryan expertly delivered the Wolves goal of developing youth in the professional league, whilst also delivering improving team successes year on year. For the past two years Coach Ryan has continued to work with our women’s league side, but this time as a coach mentor, as he extended his youth development philosophy to the next generation of British coaches. As the franchise moves into its next phase of development there is no one better than Coach Ryan to once again take to the sideline and lead the way. His thoughts ahead of the new venture “I am delighted to be back in the the league as head coach. I really enjoyed my role in coach development, working with Lauren (Milligan), Albert (Ziwa) and Tor (Freeman) was great and I’m proud of what they have already moved on to achieve. Now we have a goal of taking the Women’s team to new heights and I’m excited to once again be on the sidelines in this great league.

The men's NBL ivision 2 team welcomes a new face in Coach Jozef (Dodi) Butor to the team this season. The Slovakian brings a wealth of coaching experience to the Wolves which includes National Teams roles including GB U20 Men assistant and U18 women's assistant where he worked with Coach Ryan to gain promotion to European Division A in 2012. Coach Butor has experience and success in many London youth and men's programs, most notably with Greenhouse Pioneers, Worthing Thunder and currently Westminster Academy.

Abbott is well known to the Wolves fans, having played for the WBBL team in 2019 in her first professional season outside of Canada. In her first spell Abbott worked in the academy and it was evident she had the perfect character and ability to be a coach for the future. She worked with the junior Elevate program and mentored the academy players during her first spell, so it is great to have a full circle moment and have her lead our WEABL academy and our new look NBL women's team, which will exclusively be for those players in the academy. Abbott has combined playing and coaching and built a wealth of experience which culminated in her development of the Kwanlin Dun First Nations basketball program this past summer.

Turkish coach Faith Karahan joins the Wolves this summer having moved to the UK in 2021. After quickly establishing a strong coaching presence in London and across Berkshire he was named to the Aspire Coaching staff for the 2023 program. At Oaklands, Coach Karahan is picking up where he left off in Turkey. He comes with a strong pedigree of coaching elite U18 and U16 boys, having worked at Izmir University, Mavişehir Sports Club and Gelişim High School to name a few. As part of the coaching team Coach Karahan will lead the EABL program as well as Head Coach the exciting D3 NBL team that gives Oaklands another string to their junior player development bow.