Ama Biney '18
Year: Class of 2023
Team: Women's Basketball and Softball
Ama Biney might very well be one of the best basketball and softball players ever to represent WPI, not to mention leading both programs to their first NEWMAC championships and NCAA tournament appearances.
A four-time NFCA first team All-Region selection, Ama became the softball program's first All-American first team member in 2018, capping off her senior year that also included NEWMAC Player of the Year in both sports, a national Player of the Week award, and a nomination for NCAA Woman of the Year, and a NCAA Top 10 nod.
On the hardcourt, Ama led the Engineers in scoring, rebounding, and steals for three straight seasons, finishing her career ranked second all-time in program history for steals in a single season and a career. She became the first Engineer woman honored multiple times as a D3hoops.com All-Northeast Region All-Star, as well as the first to earn First Team All-Conference honors for three consecutive years.
She led the Engineers to unprecedented success, including an average of 21 wins in each year, school records for conference wins (61) and consecutive wins (18), four straight Worcester City Championships, and the best overall record and win percentage in school history (85-26, .770). The NEWMAC championship she led the women's basketball team to in 2016 was the first for any women's team at WPI.
"Ama truly impacted every facet of the game and was often a human highlight reel," recalled Hall of Fame head women's basketball coach Cherise Galasso. "A fierce competitor who hated to lose, Ama thrived in the big moments yet always played with class and integrity."
As an outfielder, she collected 231 hits in 559 career at-bats (.413) and averaged 32 RBI and 50 runs scored per season. She swiped 113 bases in 117 tries (.966) and hit 17 home runs, 25 triples, and 44 doubles.
"It was an hours and privilege to coach Ama and to watch her progress and achieve greatness each season while also leading the charge to help her teams excel at the highest level," remarked her head softball coach Whitney Goldstein. "Ama's natural athletic gifts, her character, and tenacious goals to achieve excellence on and off the field allowed her to become undoubtedly one of the best athletes and softball players at WPI."
She won virtually every athletics award possible in both sports while maintaining a 3.76 GPA and being a three-time Academic All-Conference team member as well as a three-time CoSIDA Academic All-Region First Team selection. Away from the court, she has consistently shown herself to be someone of high character and integrity who contributed to the greater community (Big Brothers/Big Sisters, Relay for Life, Adopt a Child, Special Olympics) and was honored with the prestigious Crimson and Gray award at WPI. In 2018, she was the first WPI student athlete to be named an NCAA Top 10 Award Winner.
Ama currently resides in Shrewsbury, Massachusetts. She spent the first five years of her professional career at Raytheon Technologies. She completed her MBA at Bentley University in 2022 and started a new role at National Grid in Quality and Compliance Assurance.Â
She has stayed involved in athletics in various ways. She coached softball for the Concord Raiders for two years during the summers. She then started an ongoing philanthropic partnership with a local Ghanaian softball program in Africa, the Ghana Shock, in which she works to send various supplies such as clothes, cleats, bats, balls, and other equipment to the team. In basketball, she spent three years refereeing before making the switch to coaching––she is currently an assistant coach at Nashoba Regional High School.
