In a moment of triumph in 2013, after lifting the European gold, Elisa Aguilar of the Spanish women’s team reached out to her manager and said, “It’s over. I’ve come this far. I’m hanging up my boots.” The decision carried extra weight because she had a contract with a club in Poland, yet at 37 she chose to take the next step. “During my twenty years of playing, I knew an injury or a coach’s decision could end my professional career abruptly. That’s why I always kept the possibility of coaching in mind. I loved management and decided to prepare for it.”
Economics from George Washington University in hand, she earned three master’s degrees in Sports Management. On October 2, she was elected the new president of the Spanish Basketball Federation, and in the centennial February she became the first woman to lead the federation known as the great federation.
It was thirty-three years ago when Aguilar first connected with the FEB, at age fourteen, after discovering basketball at the Amorós school. The young player from Madrid joined the student team in Pamplona in 1990, and since then her path has ran in lockstep with the national team and the federation. An economist from Madrid, she amassed 222 appearances, becoming the sixth player to represent Spain the most. She was one of the fourteen Spaniards who played in the WNBA, following in the footsteps of Amaya Valdemoro, Betty Cebrián and Marina Ferragut. Aguilar spent a season with the Utah Starzz.
overwhelming majority president
Elisa was nearly unanimously elected president. Seventy-seven of the seventy-nine council members in attendance at the Extraordinary Congress in Madrid’s Eurobuilding hotel cast affirmative votes, while two left their ballots blank. The room included leaders from the sporting world, such as the president of the COE, the FEB senior staff, and the president of FIBA Europe, along with other pivotal figures in Spanish basketball. The moment stood as a clear sign of the health and momentum of Spain’s basketball landscape.
Aguilar spoke of her candidacy with a focus on merit. Not because she is a woman, she said, but because she believes she has the background and the capability to contribute meaningfully to the organization. She did not shy away from the significance of becoming the leader of one of the country’s largest sporting federations. This, she said, marks the first step of many to come.
Elisa never feared stepping out of her comfort zone. Her early success as a Queen’s Cup champion and league runner-up with Canoe at sixteen was followed by a bold move to the United States to study at George Washington University. Her years there solidified her reputation, earning Rookie of the Year honors and selection as a college league All Star. She finished with more than a thousand points and three hundred assists, a testament to her skill and leadership.
Upon returning to Spain, she joined Halcón Viajes in Salamanca, where she helped secure a second-place finish in the Cup and earned a bronze at the European Championships in France. The next season took her to Caja Rural Canarias, where she paused to contemplate her future challenge. She returned to the United States in the summer of 2002 to join the WNBA’s Utah Starzz. That season provided a springboard to Ros Casares Valencia, the champions of the Spanish league; there, she captured multiple Spanish championships over nine seasons and helped the team reach two Euroleague Final Fours, though a European title eluded them.
In the summer of 2010, she moved closer to home, signing with Rivas Ecopolis for two seasons. She then ventured to Moscow to join Spartak Moscow Region, completing her career with a final triumph at the 2013 Eurobasket, a pinnacle that earned her five continental medals including gold and several silvers and bronzes, along with a world bronze. Today, Aguilar stands as the twelfth president in the hundred-year history of the federation. She reflects on her approach, saying she is the same person who once studied the game on the bench and in the gym, always analyzing, always seeking the best option. As a president, she describes herself as analytical, solution-focused, and capable of sacrifice and effort, with a spirit of generosity. She has never been obsessed with scoring points; if handed the ball, she will step up, but her tendency is to listen more and talk less, embracing a practical, no-nonsense mindset that guides her leadership and decisions.
Her record as a player and her trajectory into federation leadership reveal a constant thread: a commitment to advancing the sport, building on a solid foundation, and nurturing the game at every level. The federation she leads continues to rely on her willingness to take risks, to think strategically, and to prioritize the health and growth of basketball across Spain and beyond, with the goal of inspiring the next generation of players and coaches to dream bigger and reach farther. [Attribution: Spanish Basketball Federation and contemporary sports leadership reports].