Sanjana Ramesh

Sanjana Ramesh was born on April 12, 2001, in Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India, and grew up in Bangalore, Karnataka. She attended Delhi Public School (South) in Bengaluru, where her basketball career began. Ramesh started playing basketball initially because her school lacked a football team, wanting to demonstrate her athletic ability to her older brother, a footballer. This early engagement in the sport led her to pursue basketball professionally.

Her talent became evident early in her career. In 2017, Sanjana captained the U16 Indian Women’s Team in the FIBA U16 Asia Cup, averaging 6.5 points and 7.0 rebounds per game. Her leadership helped India qualify for Division A in the FIBA Asia Championship. The following year, in 2018, she was named MVP at both the NBA Academy Camp and the Basketball without Borders Asia Camp. These achievements played a role in her receiving a Division I basketball scholarship in the United States, becoming only the second Indian-born female player to do so. In November 2018, she signed to play college basketball at Northern Arizona University, joining the Northern Arizona Lumberjacks.

During her college career at Northern Arizona, Ramesh played as a forward. She appeared in 3 games as a freshman in the 2019-20 season. In the 2020-21 season, she played in 16 games, setting a career-high of four points against Eastern Washington and four rebounds against Arizona. She continued her academic and athletic pursuits, earning recognition as a Big Sky All-Academic selection in 2021 and receiving the Golden Eagle Scholar-Athlete Award four times (2020, 2021, 2022, 2023). In the 2022-23 season, she achieved her first double-double with 10 points and 11 rebounds against Park (AZ) on November 20, 2022.