Alexandra Wilke, 29, is a guard at the Rutronik Stars wine press. In 2026 she was voted the best player in the Bundesliga. Wilke recently completed her traineeship and after the World Cup she will teach sports and math at a high school in Karlsruhe. The World Cup begins on Friday evening with the opening game against Spain (5.45 p.m., live on MagentaSport and ProSieben).
DIE ZEIT: Ms. Wilke, are you tense so close to the home World Cup, or do you feel more anticipation?
Alexandra Wilke: I think that some people in the team definitely feel a lot of tension. The World Cup is a huge event, and of course we also have demands on ourselves that we want to fulfill. But for me the anticipation definitely outweighs it. As a child I often went to the Max-Schmeling-Halle at Alba Berlin, and I always said: I want to play in a big hall like that one day. That was my dream. And now I'm playing a World Cup in this hall.
ZEIT: Some of the most important German players – Leonie Fiebich and Frieda Bühner – only left the North American WNBA shortly before the tournament began. How do you prepare when key players are missing?
Wilke: It was like that before the Olympics. A completely different team plays in preparation. This also means that many will take on completely different roles during the World Cup than during the test matches. But the same goes for the other top teams. And our players who are active in the USA are of such a high level, it won't take them long to find their way in and make our team better.
ZEIT: Will your role also change?
Wilke: Absolutely. Leo Fiebich will play in my position – and Leo is our best player. But that's okay, I also had different roles in the test matches.
ZEIT: Fiebich became the 2024 WNBA champion with the New York Liberty. What makes them so good?
Wilke: What sets Leo apart is that she can do everything. She can defend all positions from one to four, probably even the largest, the center position. She can do everything offensively. She can post up, i.e. score with her back to the basket. But she is also our best thrower. And she has a really high gaming IQ. I don't know what she can't do.
ZEIT: You all narrowly lost the three test matches against Hungary, Turkey and Spain, your first group opponents. Does that worry you?
Wilke: It's not as if it doesn't play a role in our minds. We don't have to sugarcoat it, we would have liked to have won a game. But we're not afraid of Spain now because we lost to them once. We know we have taken steps forward and a lot is being tried out in friendlies. That's why you shouldn't overestimate it.
ZEIT: It was noticeable that many opponents built up pressure early and defended aggressively across the entire field. The team didn't cope well with that. Have you found a solution for this?
Wilke: That was particularly noticeable against Turkey. We didn't really know who was going where. Because we assume that all the teams now want to put us under so much pressure, we have been working intensively on this over the last few days. During training we looked at different ways of not leaving the player in possession of the ball alone, but rather moving the ball forward as a team.
ZEIT: How much Nyara Sabally can play is still unclear. Her sister Satou, one of the best German players, definitely cannot take part due to a concussion. What is the team missing without her?
Wilke: Satou is incredibly talented, one of our best offensive players. She would have been another scoring threat alongside Leo Fiebich. You have to defend players like that extremely hard, which creates space for the rest of us. We now have to create them differently.
ZEIT: What is the more difficult task for you - teaching math to the children at the high school or keeping calm at the opening game in front of 14,000 fans on Friday?
Wilke: Wow, good question. Both can be challenging, but the fun of it outweighs it.
ZEIT: You recently completed your traineeship and are starting at a high school in the new school year. How do you balance the two jobs?
