BT Toews didn’t need long with Gilas Women to be convinced he’d made the right call. He’d already decided that before he ever coached a practice.
The 60-year-old Canadian arrived in the Philippines last June to take over as Gilas Women’s head coach, walking away from a decorated run with Japan’s Fujitsu Red Wave to do it. In ten years there, Toews won back-to-back WJBL league titles in 2024 and 2025, added Empress Cup crowns, reached five finals, and picked up three Coach of the Year awards along the way. By his own admission, stepping away from all of that looked like strange timing, but he said he had personal goals left to chase that went beyond another championship.
Speaking to reporters Thursday in Mandaluyong City, Toews explained exactly what made the Philippines the choice, even with other national team offers on the table in Asia.
“Of all the teams that I thought about—and I’ve had some other offers in Asia to coach national teams—I thought that the Philippines, the women’s, were a team that had a really high ceiling,” Toews said. “Not just because of what happened in the last few years with Coach Pat [Aquino] and the success they had. But if things could be changed, not just on the court, but off the court, I thought that the Philippines could really get to the top tier and be a perennial contender.”
The move checked more than one box for him personally, too—landing a national team job, coaching in English again after nearly three decades in Japan, and finally living somewhere outside Japan altogether.
Toews Is Borrowing From Fujitsu, Not Copying It
Toews isn’t planning to import Japan’s system wholesale. He described his Fujitsu squad as a closer stylistic match to Gilas Women than people might assume, but was careful to draw the line at direct imitation.
“I will use my team more as a blueprint, not necessarily the national team, but my team at Fujitsu, where I coached for 10 years, plays not much different than the national team. Styles are very, very similar,” he said. “But I don’t want to say that we can just bring what Japan does to the Filipino national team. It’s not only that you should not copy someone completely because you lose the essence of the players you’re coaching, but at the same time, I feel like there’s a lot of areas that we can tune up and we will imitate.”
Off the court, he’s just as focused on building trust as he is on installing systems, working against a tight runway before Gilas Women’s first assignment under him.
A Roster With Real Pieces to Work With
Toews inherits a squad already trending upward. Gilas Women already cracked the world’s top 30 rankings and made a historic debut at the 2026 FIBA Women’s World Cup Qualifiers in Lyon, France. He’ll now have the returning Jack Animam and a rising Kacey Dela Rosa to build around, alongside mainstays Janine Pontejos and Afril Bernardino, plus promising young talents in Sophia Dignadice and Tiffany Reyes.
The timeline for results is short. Gilas Women head to the FIBA Women’s Olympic Pre-Qualifying Tournament in Guadalajara, Mexico, from August 17 to 23, before returning to Japan next month for the 20th Asian Games in Aichi-Nagoya. Put simply, these tournaments represent a fitting first test for a coach who believes in his new pieces.
