Three-time Olympian Michelle Plouffe has announced her retirement from international basketball.
The 32-year-old from Edmonton was part of Canada’s women’s basketball teams at the 2012 London Games and 2016 Rio Olympics, also helping the program win back-to-back FIBA AmeriCup championships in 2015 and 2017.
She then shifted to 3×3 basketball, where she played — alongside her twin sister Katherine Plouffe — a big role in building the Canadian program from the ground up.
Canada’s Michelle Plouffe, right, kisses her gold medal while standing on the podium with her twin sister, Katherine Plouffe, during the women’s basketball medal ceremony at the Pan Am Games in Toronto on July 20, 2015.
THE CANADIAN PRESS/AP, Julio Cortez
Plouffe led Canada to multiple FIBA 3×3 Women’s Series titles, a silver medal at the 2022 FIBA 3×3 World Cup, and a fourth-place finish at the Paris Olympics.
She is now set to join Canada Basketball’s high-performance staff as 3×3 performance manager.
Plouffe will be honoured during the FIBA 3×3 Women’s Series stop in Edmonton on Aug. 2.
“This journey has always been more than just playing basketball,” Plouffe said in a release. “It’s been about people, purpose, planting seeds and watching them grow.”
“We never set out to be the best team in the world — we set out to be the best people to play with,” Plouffe added. “And we believed the rest would follow. You don’t plant fruit. You plant seeds. We planted encouragement. We planted trust. We planted love. That’s what grew.”