Dominique Malonga Is About to Become the Seattle Storm’s Next Breakout Star—While Chasing a Computer Science Degree

Reported by Women's Health Magazine.

Dominique Malonga is 20 years old, 6-foot-6, capable of dunking in a professional game, and currently annoyed that her computer science coursework hasn't assigned enough math yet. She is not your average sophomore.

According to Women's Health Magazine, the Seattle Storm center — drafted second overall in 2024 and the youngest player in the league at the time — spent her rookie season absorbing everything from the bench before quietly becoming the youngest player in WNBA history to post a double-double and hit 100 career points. She did this while also being Cameroon-born, France-raised, and entirely new to American life. This season, with veterans Nneka Ogwumike, Skylar Diggins, and Gabby Williams gone to other teams, it's her turn to be the one others watch and follow. She's ready. "I know that I don't need to talk to lead," she says. "I will just always lead by the way I show up every day."

Building Something Bigger

What makes Malonga genuinely compelling — beyond the dunks, which she describes as feeling like layups now — is her refusal to be only one thing. This past off-season she had wrist surgery, played in the Unrivaled 3-on-3 league in Miami, suffered a concussion at the FIBA World Cup Qualifying Tournament, recovered in France playing Skyjo card games with her family, and enrolled in an online bachelor's program in computer science at Southern New Hampshire University. She Googled the degree. It fit her schedule. She signed up. Assignments are due Sundays; she often submits at 11 p.m. She is unbothered. The program will take five or six years, and her end goal is to build an app — concept still TBD — because, as she puts it, "I want to leave my print in basketball, and also leave my print in the world tomorrow." Her CS classes are also making her more curious about the performance-tracking technology her team uses, and she recently bought an Oura Ring — less for the wellness data than for the software architecture behind it.

The mindset shift this off-season gave her is arguably more valuable than any of those individual accomplishments. Between two separate recoveries and a season that didn't go exactly as planned, she learned to adapt without spiraling. The Storm's apartment complex has a piano room her teammates have nicknamed "Dom's Room" — she retreats there when her mind needs a reset, teaching herself pieces off YouTube the same way she's been teaching herself everything else: self-directed, disciplined, and at her own pace. That same deliberateness defined her rookie year, when she chose not to put pressure on herself while adjusting to an entirely new country. It worked.

Year two is different. The veterans are gone, Flau'jae Johnson is the headlining rookie, and Malonga is now the one setting the tone — through her physicality, her dunks, her core strength work, and the quiet consistency of someone who shows up the same way on bad days as she does on good ones. The goal is a championship. The degree comes after practice. The piano plays whenever she needs it.

Dominique Malonga is building a career, an education, and a life on her own terms — and she's doing it all before she turns 21.

Read the original at Women's Health Magazine.