NATCHITOCHES – Northwestern State women's basketball head coach Anna Nimz announced the addition of three incoming freshmen for the 2024-25 season on Wednesday afternoon.
 
The touted freshman class includes Vernell Atamah, a district MVP, Mina Kassim, an all-state player, and Joceline Geara, an international champion.
 
Atamah, a 6-foot forward from Dallas is a three-time all-district player at John D. Horn High School with more than 1,000 career points and 700 rebounds and a 70% free throw shooter. She averaged more than 6.0 rebounds per game in each of her three prep seasons before a career-best 16.1 points and 7.4 rebounds as a senior.
 
Her additional 1.5 assists, 2.5 steals and 35 percent shooting effort from beyond the arc in her senior season earned District MVP honors.
 
Off the court, Atamah is a four-time member of the first-team all-academic team, a member of the leadership council and National Honor Society and on the honor roll.
 
A 5-foot-10 guard from Houston's C.E. King High School, Kassim earned an all-state honor from the Texas Girl's Coaches Association this past season along with her first-team all-district honors.
 
A three-level scorer, Kassim surpassed 1,000 career points in her prep career helping her to three different all-district honors. She was also a first-team all-academic honoree and on her school's honor roll.
 
Originally born in Massachusetts but moving to Byblos, Lebanon, Jocelin Geara is a 5-foot-7 guard has been playing and producing at a high level throughout her high school years, for her school, club and country.
 
She was named a starter on the U16 Lebanon National Team that played in the FIBA Asia Cup during her freshman year at SABIS International School. As a junior she was named MVP of the SABIS Global Tournament, the first in her school's history, and chosen in the pool of 20 players for the senior national team. Her club team in Beirut won the Arab Championship in Tunisia, the only team from Lebanon in the competition, in 2022.
 
This past season for the Beirut U18 squad, Geara helped lead her team to the finals of the playoffs of the Lebanese Cup averaging a double-double with 25 points and 10 rebounds during the playoff run. That same year she averaged 12.4 points and 4.0 rebounds in the regular season for her D1 Club in Beirut. 
 
Geara is equally as successful off the court as the Head of the Student Life Organization, won the President's Award in Lebanese American University's Model EU program and was twice chose to represent her school in the SABIS Start International Public Speaking Competition in the "Our World, Our Concern" category in Oman.