Makala Roper joined the staff of head coach Toyelle Wilson and the Texas A&M-Corpus Christi women's basketball team as an assistant coach in May 2025. The 2025-26 season will be her first with the program.

Roper comes to the Islanders after five years with Seattle University, starting with the women's basketball team as a graduate assistant ahead of the 2020-21 season. She served in this role for two seasons before then being elevated to Director of Basketball Operations in 2022 and then to an assistant coach in 2023. Roper also spent a season at Lakeside School in Seattle in 2019-2020 before joining the Redhawks, serving as the co-head coach for the JV team and as an assistant for the varsity team.

Prior to her coaching career, Roper spent four seasons playing at UC Santa Barbara, playing in 115 total games and averaging 7.2 points, 2.3 rebounds and 1.9 assists per game during her time with the Gauchos. Her best season came in 2015-16, when she earned an All-Big West Honorable Mention nod after averaging 12.2 points per game while shooting 37.5 percent from three-point range. Roper would go on to play one season professionally after college, featuring for Baerum Basket Bekkestua in Norway.

Roper, a native of Seattle, graduated with her Bachelor's degree in African-American/Black Studies from UCSB in 2018, and she would later earn her Master's degree in Sports Business Leadership from Seattle U in 2022.