The basketball rise of Nate Ament is a family story

With each step USA Basketball’s Nate Ament takes in his player edition Reeboks during the Hoop Summit, he will be giving respect to his mother by showcasing the colors of the Rwandan flag — light blue, yellow and green with a golden sun.

“It’s really special for me to be able to do that,” Ament told Andscape. “And it’s a huge tribute to my mom with her hard work and dedication she’s put in and all her hardship that’s comes from Rwanda. It’s a tribute to the country as well. I’m trying to pay back to the country what it’s given to me, the perspective of love that I’ve felt from the country and all the support I’m receiving from them.

“But also, it’s just a really cool design. An idea with the colors of the Rwandan flag really fit perfectly with the shoe.”

While Rwanda and Italy are in his heart, too, Ament’s stellar high school basketball career has landed him on USA’s roster to play against the World team in the prestigious Hoop Summit on Saturday night at the Rose Garden in Portland, Oregon.

Amen is the top-ranked uncommitted boys basketball player in the ESPN 100 Class of 2025. The 6-foot-9 Colgan High (Va.) forward is playing with the country’s top high school senior boys basketball players with Team USA against the top international teens in the Hoop Summit. Ament is still undecided on where he will be playing in college next season but could decide soon. Ament is considering offers from Duke, Kentucky, Arkansas, Louisville and Tennessee.

“Obviously, I’m trying to be respectful of the coaches and their time and effort they are putting into recruiting me,” Ament said. “But I’m really just trying to take time to not rush a decision, to make the right decision. I’m putting in as much time and energy and focus into the right school and making sure that whatever choice I pick, I have no doubts or no second thoughts.”

Sitting in the stands rooting for Ament will be his parents Albert Ament and Godlieve Mukankuranga. The foundation of Nate’s family was built on his parents’ unique love story, one that started in Rwanda not long after the end of a genocide.

Mukankuranga was born of Tutsi ethnicity in the Kicukiro District of Rwanda. The country had a long history of strife between Tutsi and Hutu ethnic groups dating back to the colonial period when the ruling Belgians favored the Tutsis. After Rwanda was granted independence from Belgian rule in 1962, Tutsis were often faced with discrimination and violence from the ruling Hutu. Many Tutsis decided to move to Burundi and other parts of Africa.

After elementary school, Mukankuranga said she was not allowed to go to a public secondary school in Rwanda because she was Tutsi. The only way for her to attend secondary school was to pay to go to private school. A woman from UNICEF offered Mukankuranga the opportunity to go to secondary school in Pisa, Italy, and she accepted. She also stayed in Pisa to earn a bachelor’s degree in nursing, not knowing that a holocaust was on the horizon back home.

On April 6, 1994, Rwandan president Juvenal Habyarimana was assassinated by Hutu extremists after his plane was shot down in Kigali, Rwanda. Hutu extremists believed all Tutsis supported rebels from outside the country. What followed was a genocide of an estimated 1 million Tutsi people, according to the United Nations. Hutu Power, an extremist anti-Tutsi group formed in 1993, were the main organizer of the genocide, according to the Museum of the Holocaust Montreal. An estimated 250,000 women were also raped, with two thirds contracting the AIDS virus, according to the museum. Killings continued until July 4, 1994, when the Rwandan Public Front took military control of Rwanda.

While Mukankuranga was fortunate to be in Italy at the time of the Rwandan genocide, her mother and numerous other family members still in Rwanda were murdered. Mukankuranga became an Italian citizen thanks to the Italian family that moved her over and adopted her.

“When I finished nursing school, that’s when genocide happened with Rwanda,” Mukankuranga said. “They killed everybody. My mother, my brother, my two sisters, my uncles, my cousin. Everybody got killed except me, my two sisters, who are now in Italy, and one brother who stayed in Rwanda. Everything was completely finished and I was there [in Italy] by then.

“My adoptive parents, they didn’t have any kids. I was there by myself in that family when they see everybody there and nobody left. That’s why they decided to adopt me, and I become their kid. And I become Italian. Everything I have is from Italy.”

Mukankuranga made “the best reality of what was happening” in Rwanda in 1995 by returning to work as a nurse for UNICEF. Whether it was from her initial return or when she visits Rwanda now, there is resounding pain. But she also believes she is a “lucky one.”

“I still have some pain, but then the reason I went back to Rwanda was to make myself hurt and understand how I can move on by looking at the people who left,” Mukankuranga said. “And then I consider myself lucky because I have my adoptive parents, I have friends in Italy. I have everything I need in Italy. The other people who left Rwanda did not have anybody with them, especially the kids.

“I worked in the orphanage [in Rwanda] where you hear stories from those kids who are telling you, ‘They killed my mother in front of my face and I have only one brother who is left.’ I’m talking about a 9-year-old girl who is now watching her brother [who is] two or three years old. They are the only people left in the whole family. That’s the moment I decided to be strong because, at end of the day, I was a very lucky one.”

Mukankuranga grew up in a Catholic church in Rwanda and Italy, but the Rwandan genocide destroyed her faith in God for some time.

“I was raised as a Catholic, going to church every Sunday — not even one Sunday without going to church — when all of this happened,” Mukankuranga said. “I say, ‘There is no God.’ Some people died in church. God didn’t do anything and I started losing my faith completely.

“My brother kept his faith and was always angry at me saying, ‘Why you say that God left us? There’s a reason why you need to go back to church.’ I said, ‘Forget it. I’m not going to church. I’m not going to say peace be with you to somebody who killed my mother. So, I’m not going there.’ ”

Nate Ament is fully aware of his Rwandan family history but would like to be more educated. He credits his mother for his work ethic, drive and ability to keep life in perspective.

“She’s obviously overcome all that happened in Rwanda and I haven’t talked to her as much as I would like to about it,” he said. “Just growing up, she really was never complaining. At one point she had three nursing jobs, and she would come home super-tired, still make us dinner and do the dishes and stuff like that. So, from a young age, seeing my mom’s dedication and perseverance, hard work through just trying to get us all that we needed with clothes and food just helped me have a deeper appreciation for all that she did for me.

“That just makes sure that no matter what I’m doing — whether it’s basketball or anything in life — that I’ll always be appreciative of just being able to do it because I could be in a worse situation. And she showed me early that with hard work and education, you could do whatever you want.”

Said Albert Ament: “She will do anything for those four boys and they really love their mom.”

Nate Ament said he visited Rwanda with his family in 2016 and 2020. Even through his mother’s tragedy, he was able to fall in love with the country and his family members living there.

“From both visits, I just could remember myself crying my eyes out when I left because I was sad to leave my family,” Nate said. “But first impressions, it was really beautiful. They called it ‘The Land of a Thousand Hills,’ and it was beautiful to see all the hills and greenery, scenery, stuff like that. But most of my time on my visits was spent with my family.

“So, spending time with them and seeing everybody was really special to me. And then experiencing my family and everybody in a new setting with different languages and just meeting people I’ve never met before, it was truly special.”

Years before Mukankuranga would meet her future husband, Albert Ament was a notable college basketball player at Wayne State (Mich.) University.

Albert was named to Wayne State’s Hall of Fame in 2001. He is still Wayne State men’s basketball’s single-season record holder for total points (654) and is currently third in program history in field goal percentage (.563), seventh in free throws made (279), 10th in rebounds (600) and 18th in points (1,065). Albert also graduated from WSU with an English degree Cum Laude in 1989 and with a master’s degree in French in 1993.

“I don’t think they had cameras back then,” joked Nate Ament. “I don’t think they had a 3-point line. But no, he was pretty good. And it’s pretty hard to be a Hall of Famer no matter what level you’re playing at. It is awesome to see. I went back to his school maybe a couple years ago. I got to see his Hall of Fame pictures, some of his articles that I never really knew about.”

Albert was inspired to join the United States Peace Corps after a cousin told him he had a life-changing experience with the organization in the Philippines. He completed a pair of two-year tours in the Peace Corps. From 1989 to 1991, he was a high school English teacher in Chad, and from 1993-95, he was an English teacher trainer in Madagascar. In 1996-97, Albert worked for the Catholic Relief Services in Rwanda and for CARE in Zaire.

Albert returned to Rwanda in 1998 as an intern with the Catholic Relief Program in the wake of the genocide. It was then that he met Mukankuranga and they fell in love. He convinced her to return to Catholicism. They got married, relocated initially to Italy, had a family of four sons and now live in Manassas, Virginia, where she is a nurse and he is a high school French teacher.

“I was there working and I’m from big Irish Catholic family,” Ament said. “So, I met a lot of people and did a lot of things through the different parishes that I knew there, and then Catholic Relief Services itself — being the big development arm of the Catholic Church for American development work around the world, and still have many friends that work with that. Then we just kind of crossed paths.

“I think I was delivering some boxes of medicine to the office where she worked. And since she was a nurse for them, she got a job while she was going to be home for a while in Italy. And we just crossed paths and started going out and then we started going to mass together and different things. So that was amazing. At that point, then we got married and these four boys came along.

Said Mukankuranga: “Albert came in my life and he brought me back to church.”

“That’s news to me,” Albert said. “I’m going to talk to your brother about that. That’s good. That part of it I didn’t really know.”

The Ament boys all grew up playing soccer. Nate started getting into basketball after his third oldest brother, Frederick, began playing. Aiding Nate’s love and skills for hoops was his growth spurt.

Nate said he started taking basketball seriously in junior high. Next up was AAU basketball, work with basketball trainers and dedicated time in the gym during the coronavirus pandemic. Albert recalled when his son became serious about basketball.

“We’re lucky we were able to pay for the teams and then later on the trainer and all that stuff so he could kind develop and go all that route as he did,” Albert said. “But he really worked at that. He’d always say — even when I was picking him up from wherever that he needed to work out — I’d say, ‘You’re going to go work out again?’ [Nate would say] ‘Yeah, I got to practice my craft. I got to hone my craft.’ ”

Said Nate: “Around 2019 is when I really started to fall in love with it. That’s when I really started training with my brother outside and my friends. That’s when I knew I really wanted to do something with the sport.”

Nate was discovered nationally after showing all-around skills playing for North Carolina’s Team Loaded in 2023. He said he believed he had a chance to be special in basketball when college scholarship offers started coming his way. He officially became one of the nation’s best prep players when he was named to USA Basketball’s U18 national team that won a gold medal in the 2024 FIBA Men’s U18 AmeriCup.

Kiyan Anthony, the son of former NBA star Carmelo Anthony, will be representing his late grandfather’s Puerto Rican roots on the World Team. Tajh Ariza, the son of former NBA forward Trevor Ariza, is also playing for the World Team representing his mother’s Japanese heritage. Nate has an American and Italian passport and has hopes of getting a Rwandan one in the future. USA Basketball announced he was on the Team USA roster for the Hoop Summit roster on Jan. 15.

Nate told Andscape that he hasn’t decided yet if he would prefer to play for USA, Italy or Rwanda’s senior national basketball team, if invited to join.

“I was planning to play for the World Team, but just because of the time and how everything was planned out [USA Basketball] had already announced the World Team and put me on the USA Team,” Nate said.

Nate’s road from unknown three years ago to the Hoop Summit and coveted college prospect has been a whirlwind. He said he doesn’t feel overwhelmed, however, crediting a support system that consists of his parents, his siblings, mentor and Orlando Magic forward Paolo Banchero, his agent Derek Malloy at Lift Sports Management and advisor Matt Rosenberg.

As for Nate’s parents, they are just following their mature son’s lead and are confident he will make the right college decision.

“Nate is a very good kid,” Mukankuranga said. “You see how he doesn’t pay attention too much [to all the attention]. He’s not stressed out. And if he is not stressed out, there’s no need for us to be stressed. He is handling everything very well. If I saw him stressed out, then I will be really concerned. But he is very good with it.”

Said Nate: “They’ve kept me grounded and humble and always making sure I do the right thing.”