Evelyn Akhator enters NJCAA Hall of Fame after Chipola title run

Evelyn Akhator is going into the NJCAA Women’s Basketball Coaches Association Hall of Fame on the strength of a Chipola run that was far bigger than a junior-college stopover. In two seasons in Marianna, Florida, from 2013 to 2015, she put up a 2014-15 line of 743 points and 584 rebounds and helped Chipola win the 2015 NJCAA women’s basketball national championship, the only women’s basketball title in program history.

Akhator’s rise at Chipola was visible well before the trophy. On Nov. 13, 2014, the program named her FCSAA Women’s Basketball Player of the Week after the first three games of the season. By Feb. 23, 2015, she was one of Chipola’s three first-team All-Panhandle Conference selections, joined by Sueterrica Key and Rosemarie Julie. That was the shape of the title team: Akhator was not just the biggest name, she was one of the standard-setters on a roster that kept stacking hardware.

The numbers explain why. Chipola’s 2017 coverage of her later path said she averaged 14.7 points, 12 rebounds and 2.6 blocks per game as a freshman, then jumped to 21.2 points, 16.7 rebounds, 3.1 steals and 2.9 blocks per game as a sophomore. That is not a normal progression. It is the kind of production that turns a post player from a local force into a national problem, and it helped make the 2015 championship run feel inevitable once the bracket narrowed.

That Chipola team still sits at the center of Akhator’s legacy, but the next stop mattered too. On April 14, 2017, Chipola Athletics reported that the Dallas Wings took her third overall in the WNBA draft. The WNBA’s draft prospect profile described her as a Nigerian who came to the United States and first thrived at Chipola before moving on to Kentucky, where she earned All-SEC honors. A WNBA player page later listed her at 6-foot-3, born Feb. 3, 1995, and drafted No. 3 overall in 2017.

Chipola keeps using Akhator as the measuring stick. When Kanija Daniel won the 2024-25 NJCAA Division I Women’s Basketball Player of the Year award on April 12, 2025, the school noted that Daniel joined Akhator as the only two Lady Indians to win it. That is the clearest proof that Akhator was not merely a great junior-college player. She became the standard.