TORONTO, Ont. (January 6, 2022) – Canada Basketball announced Thursday that Víctor Lapeña has signed a multi-year contract to be Head Coach of Canada’s Senior Women’s National Team through the Paris 2024 Olympic Games.

In addition, Noelle Quinn will join Lapeña’s staff as Lead Assistant Coach, alongside current assistant coaches Steve Baur and Carly Clarke through the Paris 2024 Olympic Games.

Lapeña, 46, is currently the head coach of Fenerbahçe in the Turkish Super League.

A native of Zaragoza, Spain, since 2007 Lapeña has been a mainstay within the Spanish Basketball Federation, Federación Española de Baloncesto (FEB), where he has captured 14 international FIBA medals during his years with the Senior Women’s National Team, as well as various age-group teams.

Internationally, as an assistant coach with Spain’s Senior Women’s National Team, Lapeña is an Olympic silver medalist (Rio 2016), a two-time Eurobasket champion (2013, 2017) and helped coach the team to a silver medal at the 2014 FIBA World Championship for Women.  Over the course of his 14 years with Spain, Lapeña has coached in some of FIBA’s largest competitions and tournaments, including the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games.  

Lapeña, who has also served as head coach of Spain’s women’s age-group teams, also captured a pair of silver medals at the FIBA U17 Women’s World Championships in 2012 and 2014.  A perennial powerhouse federation in Europe, he also coached Spain to gold medals at the 2011 FIBA Europe Under-16 Championship for Women, 2013 FIBA Europe Under-18 Championship for Women and 2015 FIBA Europe Under-18 Championship for Women. 

Since joining Fenerbahçe in 2019, Lapeña has led the team to the Turkish Women's Basketball Presidential Cup (2019), Turkish Women's Basketball Cup (2020) and to a club-record 15th Women's Basketball Super League title in 2021.     

Prior to joining Fenerbahçe, Lapeña spent a season in the Russian Premier League where he led Nadezhda Orenburg to the EuroCup Women 2019 title, their first in club history.  

Lapeña has also coached more than 300 games in Liga Femenina de Baloncesto, Spain’s top women’s basketball league, including leading Perfumerías Avenida Baloncesto to a league title in 2012-13 and the Queen's Cup of Basketball (Copa de la Reina de Baloncesto), an annual professional club competition, the following season.

Currently Head Coach of the Seattle Storm in the WNBA, Quinn has been involved with the organization in a variety of coaching roles since retiring as a player in 2018.  Quinn joined the Storm as an assistant coach in 2019 before becoming Associate Head Coach for the 2020 season where she helped lead the team to their fourth WNBA championship in franchise history. 

As a player, Quinn was selected 4th overall in the 2007 WNBA Draft by Minnesota and appeared in 400 games over 12 seasons with the Lynx, Los Angeles Sparks, Washington Mystics, Seattle Storm and Phoenix Mercury.  Quinn also is the only person in league history to win championships as a coach (Seattle 2020) and a player (Seattle 2018).

Internationally, Quinn represented Bulgaria in several FIBA competitions, including the FIBA EuroBasket Women Qualifiers 2017.  She also spent 10 seasons overseas playing professionally with Spartak Vidnoe (Russia), Teo Vilnius (Lithuania), Eliztur Ramla (Israel), USO Mondeville (France), Hansae Woori Bank (South Korea), Botas (Turkey), USK Praha (Czech Republic), Artego Bydgoszcz (Poland), and Dike Napoli (Italy).

Canada is in Group C for the FIBA Women's Basketball World Cup 2022 Qualifying Tournament and will face Japan (Feb 10), Bosnia and Herzegovina (Feb 12) and Belarus (Feb 13) in Osaka, Japan.

Three teams from each tournament will advance to the FIBA Women's Basketball World Cup 2022 in Sydney. Host, Australia, and Olympic champions, USA, receive automatic qualification for the FIBA Women's Basketball World Cup 2022.

Belgrade (Serbia), which will host two qualifying tournaments, and Washington, D.C. (USA) will stage the remaining FIBA Women's Basketball World Cup 2022 Qualifying Tournament.

The FIBA Women's Basketball World Cup 2022 will be the 19th edition of FIBA's most distinguished women's event and will take place September 22 to October 1.

QUOTES

“Joining a high-level organization as Canada Basketball is an honour and a great responsibility. I believe the program has tremendous potential as we enter a transition period for the Senior Women’s National Team ahead of the Paris 2024 Olympic Games. Our challenge will be give confidence to the stars of the future, while not forgetting all the good that has been done to get the team to this point.  That to me is the cornerstone of building a winning team and culture.  I’m looking forward to getting to know the players and staff over the course of the next month as we prepare for the FIBA Women's Basketball World Cup 2022 Qualifying Tournament.” – Víctor Lapeña, Head Coach, Senior Women’s National Team

“Over the course of the last several years, I’ve observed the growing strength of Canada Basketball and the Senior Women’s National Team.  To now have the opportunity to join the program, especially at a time when the future is so bright, and to work alongside Víctor and the entire staff, is an exciting opportunity and one I’m grateful to be a part of.  Our quest to the Paris 2024 Olympic Games starts today and I can’t wait to get to work.” – Noelle Quinn, Lead Assistant Coach, Senior Women’s National Team

“Following an extensive international search for our next Senior Women’s National Team head coach, we’re thrilled to have Víctor and Noelle lead our program over the next three years into the Paris 2024 Olympic Games.  Our players asked us to find the best candidates with a blend of both professional and international FIBA women’s coaching experience and with both we firmly believe that we have exceeded those expectations and positioned this program for continued growth for years to come.” – Denise Dignard, General Manager / Executive Vice-President, Women's High Performance

“Canada Basketball has made a promise to our players that we will work tirelessly to invest in winning resources to help propel our teams to the next level in international basketball. In hiring Víctor and Noelle, proven winners on the global women's basketball stage, we have reaffirmed this promise to our Senior Women’s National Team athletes as we work to achieve our podium ambitions.” – Michael Bartlett, President & CEO, Canada Basketball