Austin senior Babaye Oja likes to play up-tempo basketball and that’s exactly what she’ll be doing when she plays at the college level next season.

Oja signed her letter-of-intent to play for the Iowa Central Community College women’s basketball team next season at Austin High School Wednesday. Oja will play under an athletic scholarship at Iowa Central, which is a Division II NJCAA school located in Fort Dodge, Iowa.

“It feels great,” Oja said of the signing. “Yesterday I walked in the gym and the girls were practicing for AAU and I almost cried. But now I’m still playing basketball so it’s OK.”

According to Iowa Central head coach Craig Carlson, the Tritons play at a very fast pace and its been very effective for them as they have averaged 25 wins in the last five years. Iowa Central finished 27-6 overall before losing in the Regional Finals this season.

Carlson thinks Oja’s athleticism should fit in just fine with his team, which averaged over 76 points per game this past season.

“We never saw her play, but coach (Gary) Peterson sent us a DVD and after five minutes of watching that we kind of fell in love with her,” Carlson, who has a record of 149-49 in six years at Iowa Central said. “Then the more people we talked to about her, the more we liked. I think she’ll fit in here.”

Oja averaged 15.1 points, 7.7 rebounds and 3.2 steals per game this past season while shooting 34 percent from the three-point line for the Packers as a forward, but she’ll have to make the transition to point guard or shooting guard next season.

“I’ll have to get better at ball handling and I’ve got my brother (Ajuda Nywesh, a sophomore guard on the Austin boys basketball team) to help me out for that,” Oja said.

In her three years with the Packers, Oja was part of just one postseason win and Austin never had a winning record in that span. Now she’ll be going to a program that has deep postseason runs on an annual basis.

“I’m a very competitive person and I’m excited to be a part of that,” she said. “I can’t wait for basketball season to start.”

Oja said her goal is to eventually transfer to a Division I school like Iowa State and Northern Iowa to play basketball. Central Iowa had three players from this year’s team transfer to larger schools. One player committed to Division I South Dakota State and two went on two Division II Southwest State.

For now Oja is just focused on improving herself to play next season for the Tritons and she’s glad that her college choice is out of the way.

“It’s a relief that it’s over,” she said. “It just felt right. Their campus is almost as big as a University and it has that University feel. It just felt like home there.”

Carlson was surprised on how many onlookers Oja’s signing drew at AHS as their were about 20 students who attended the event. He said that just shows what kind of person she is.

“She game down for a campus visit and I talked to her a couple minutes and I felt like I had known her my whole life,” Carlson said. “She’s got a tremendous smile and a tremendous attitude. She’s got quite the personality and that’s evidenced by the turnout today. This tells me a lot about what people think about her.”