With all the new appointments now in place, it will be interesting to see what new heights our Gilas Women teams can reach.
The full transformation of the Gilas Women program from the Pat Aquino era is now complete with the Samahang Basketbol ng Pilipinas’ (SBP) announcement last week of the appointment of Canadian Burke Toews as new head coach of the women’s seniors team.
This announcement came a day after Sandy Arespacochaga was appointed head coach of Gilas Girls and Bacon Austria named program director. A few months earlier, Juno Sauler was named head coach of Gilas Youth, which is currently playing in the FilOil preseason tournament as preparation for the FIBA U18 Asia Cup SEABA Qualifiers.
According to the SBP, Toews was picked after an extensive search involving interviews with numerous applicants.
“I’m extremely grateful to the SBP for the trust and opportunity,” said Toews in a statement released by the SBP. “Philippine basketball has incredible passion, and Philippine women’s basketball has tremendous potential.
“We want to build a team that is both resilient and aggressive defensively so that we can maximize the offensive talent that exists. This will allow us to play with pace and space. I’m excited to work with the players, coaches, and stakeholders to help build something sustainable and competitive on the international stage.”
This is the first time that the Philippine women’s basketball team will be handled by a foreign coach. It’s also the first time that a full time program director has been appointed specifically for the women’s basketball program.
The moves are an indication of the SBP’s renewed focus on women’s basketball as it seeks to sustain the gains made during Aquino’s 12-year tenure.
Upcoming Tournaments and Targets for the National Team
Toews will get his baptism of fire this August when Gilas Women, as one of the eight teams that didn’t qualify for the 2026 FIBA Women’s World Cup, will participate in the 2028 FIBA Women’s Pre-Qualifying Qualifying Tournament. The winner gets a slot in the main Qualifying Tournament next year.
Realistically speaking, the Philippines faces very steep odds here. Also participating are Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Colombia (whom they beat last February), New Zealand, Senegal and South Sudan. Nevertheless it should serve as a good venue for Toews to evaluate his players in a quality tournament setting. Getting a couple of wins here is doable and would be a good morale booster.
Then in September there’s the Aichi-Nagoya Asian Games where Gilas Women seek to improve on their best-ever fifth-place 5×5 finish in Hangzhou.
In the previous Asian Games, The Philippines beat Kazakhstan by 36 and Hong Kong, China 24 but lost to Japan by 37 in the group stage to qualify for the quarterfinals, where they were promptly dispatched by Korea by 22. There were no classification games in Hangzhou, so Gilas Women were automatically awarded fifth place over the other eliminated quarterfinalists by virtue of a higher quotient.
The results, though, served to highlight the big gap in Asian women’s 5×5 basketball, one which the SBP hopes to narrow with this new direction. On the top tier are Australia, China, Japan and South Korea, which are all in the top 15 of the FIBA rankings. New Zealand is just a notch below those four, and several notches ahead of countries like the Philippines, Chinese Taipei, Lebanon and Iran. Any of these four can beat any of the others on any given day.
Luckily for Gilas Women, Australia and New Zealand are (still) not competing in the Asian Games, which theoretically means that the fourth semifinal spot is up for grabs. In Hangzhou, North Korea took advantage of a favorable draw to sneak into the semifinals, where they lost to South Korea by 19.
A spot in the bronze medal match in Aichi-Nagoya would be the most realistic goal for Gilas Women in the short term. The latest FIBA rankings suggest that this is achievable, as the Philippines is ranked sixth in Asia with Australia and New Zealand in the mix.
Toews has a lot of material to work with. Newly-naturalized forward Elizabeth Means should add some depth, while the young core of Kacey Dela Rosa, Sophia Dignadice, Vanessa De Jesus, Sumayah Sugapong and Naomi Panganiban complement well with veterans Afril Bernardino, Janine Pontejos and Trina Guytingco.
The big question is whether Jack Animam will make a return to the lineup after sitting out the Southeast Asian Games and FIBA Women’s World Cup qualifiers. A frontcourt tandem of Animam and Dela Rosa is certainly something Toews would like to have.
At the junior level, Arespacochaga has an excellent record of player development dating back to his days as a champion coach for Ateneo in UAAP Boys’ Basketball. He’ll get an even earlier baptism of fire in the FIBA Women’s U18 Asia Cup SEABA Qualifiers set next month in Bacolod.
Like Toews, Coach Sandy has a lot of material to work with. Gilas Girls finished sixth in the 2025 FIBA U16 Women’s Asia Cup, compiling a 1-3 record that included a huge win over Korea, so the momentum is there.
Two standouts of the U18 team are expected lead the way in Bacolod, and both happen to be daughters of former PBA players.
Eighteen-year-old Sophia Dignadice, daughter of Yves, made her seniors team debut at the SEA Games and was also part of the WCQ team.
Fifteen-year-old Tiffany Reyes, daughter of Jay-R, is already six-foot-one and has shown a deadly shot from outside. It was her clutch buzzer-beater that lifted Gilas Girls over Korea in the Asia Cup.
Austria has the unenviable job of making sure all these moving parts are aligned towards further improving women’s hoops here by sustaining its rising popularity, while also trying to narrow the gap between the Asian giants and the Philippines.
Banner images from the SBP.
Frequently Asked Questions
Burke Toews, a Canadian coach, was appointed Gilas Women head coach after an extensive SBP search involving interviews with multiple international applicants.
Gilas Women will compete in the 2028 FIBA Women’s Pre-Qualifying Tournament in August 2025, where the winner earns a spot in the main Qualifying Tournament.
Bacon Austria was named program director of Gilas Women, making him the first person appointed to that role specifically for the Philippine women’s basketball program.
Gilas Women achieved their best-ever fifth-place finish in the 5×5 event at the 2023 Hangzhou Asian Games, their highest placement in the competition’s history.
Sophia Dignadice and Tiffany Reyes headline the junior program. Dignadice has already debuted for the seniors team, while Reyes hit the clutch buzzer-beater against Korea in the U16 Asia Cup.
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