WATERLOO, Ont. - For the second time in as many years, Warriors women's basketball Head Coach Jessica Roque will be representing Canada on the international stage, and this time the spotlight is even brighter.
Roque was announced as the Head Coach for Team Canada at the upcoming FIBA U17 Women's World Cup back in March. It will be her first time leading the bench for Team Canada, after winning bronze at the FIBA U19 Women's World Cup in 2023 and silver at the FIBA U16 Women's AmeriCup last summer, both times as an assistant coach.
"It's a great honour to represent Canada," said Roque, who will head to Brno, Czechia with a nearly identical staff to the one Canada had at last year's U16 AmeriCup, save for Fabienne Blizzard, whose head coaching role Roque now steps into.
"It's such a cool experience, to go to a different country, and especially a World Cup experience," said Roque. "For any basketball coach, player, fan to go to a different country and see firsthand how basketball culture transcends other countries is really neat."
While the roster has yet to be announced, the selection camp roster included names like U16 AmeriCup all-star Avery Arije and standouts Ashley Vande Ven and Frances Vollett.
"I really like this group. I think they're super talented," said Roque. "It's really exciting to be at the inception of these young people's journeys."
That feeling is heightened by the recent and ongoing growth of women's sports at the professional level, particularly in Canada, where the Toronto Tempo recently began their inaugural WNBA season as the league's first team north of the border.
Roque says this was the first season where she recognized some of the WNBA draftees as players she'd coached or coached against, and the tremendous opportunity she is helping make a reality for these players – now as Head Coach – is not lost on her.
"We're coaching future Olympians and future professionals at this age group," she said. "Hopefully find some success this summer, and then we'll see where their success leads further down the road."
"It's also part of why I hope to continue to be a part of Canada basketball," she continued. "It's about the development of these young people, but it's also about the development of our sport and women's basketball in our country."
"I'm very invested in this group, but also very invested in what this looks like for 2028 when we're in LA [at the summer Olympics]"
Canada finished 11th at the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris but have enjoyed recent success at the junior age group FIBA tournaments, including the at U17 World Cup, where Canada won silver in 2024 – their best ever finish. They also advanced to the semifinals at the 2022 FIBA Women's Basketball World Cup for the first time since 1986.
Roque will look to continue that success in Brno, and hope to add a third colour of hardware to her collection – gold. Achieving that would almost certainly involve taking down the United States, who have won six out of seven tournaments since the U17 Women's World Cup's inception in 2010, and defeated Canada in the gold medal game at the U16 AmeriCup last summer.
"The kids I'm coaching on the national team are literally the best in all of the country and arguably the world," said Roque, noting that as with any experience she's had with Canada Basketball, she hopes to borrow elements from that standard of excellence to continue to push the standard back home in Waterloo.
"I'm always looking at different environmental pieces and skill sets that I can take from my time away from Waterloo, and then what I can bring back to our space to enrich our environment."
The 2026 FIBA U17 Women's World Cup takes place July 11-19 in Brno, Czechia. Canada is in Group D with Italy, Egypt, and New Zealand, and will tip off their tournament on July 11 against Italy at 2:15 PM local time (8:45 PM EDT). All games can be streamed live on FIBA Basketball's YouTube channel.
