Cheryl Jean-Paul

Head Coach Women's Basketball

Department: Athletics

Phone1: 604.513.2131

Education: BSc Manitoba '05

This year, Cheryl Jean Paul will enter her second season as the Spartans women’s basketball coach.

In her first year, Jean-Paul led her team to a 3-21 Canada West regular season record in what was a predictably challenging campaign that had a new coach implementing a new system with a number of new players.

But despite her regular season record, there was a dramatic difference between the Spartans team that started the season and the one that ended it. And the development became evident even as early as late-November.

After the Spartans opening weekend in Lethbridge, they lost the next nine games by an average of 22.1 points per game. But on Nov. 27 things started to change for the better.

The Spartans still lost 11 of their next 13 games but, if you exclude the weekend series against eventual CIS silver-medallist Saskatchewan, the Spartans nine losses after Nov. 26 were by an average of just 7.9 points per game. And they weren’t playing patsies either. Of those nine losses, eight came against playoff teams and one, a four-point loss, came against Winnipeg, a team that finished 20-4 in the regular season.

Prior to joining the Spartans, Jean-Paul had over ten years of coaching experience a wealth of playing experience.

Her coaching pedigree includes three years as head coach at Red River College where she won a Manitoba Colleges Athletic Conference title in 2009 with the Rebels. She also won three consecutive conference championships and a provincial bronze medal with River East Collegiate’s junior varsity team and was an assistant coach with the University of Manitoba Bisons women’s basketball team for two years.
Jean-Paul was the head coach for Manitoba’s 2009 Canada Games U17 girls’ team and was the women’s head coach for the Manitoba Region of Canada Basketball’s Centre for Performance program.

She was also named head coach for Manitoba’s 2011 Western Canada Games U15 midget girls’ team but stepped down from that position upon being hired at TWU.

Jean-Paul, who is a Level III NCCP certified coach as well as a Master Learning Facilitator for the NCCP Intro to Competition basketball coaching course, has been recognized for her coaching abilities by being awarded the Jim Bulloch award by the Manitoba Basketball Coaches Association as well as being a Finalist for the Coaching Manitoba High Performance Coach of the Year award.

In 2009, the Winnipeg native travelled to Zambia and Rwanda to observe and to help their national sporting organizations develop their programming and their pursuit of athletic excellence.
Jean-Paul has been an instructor at a number of clinics including Basketball Manitoba Super Coaches Clinic, University of Manitoba Elite 60 Camp, University of Manitoba Women’s Spring Camp, University of Manitoba Mini-University Basketball Camp, St. John’s Ravenscourt Sports Camp and Athletes in Action Spring Break clinic.

As a five year player with the University of Manitoba, Jean-Paul earned all-star and MVP honours (1999-2000) with the Bisons, a CIS silver medal and a GPAC conference championship in 1998. Jean-Paul scored over 1000 points in her five year career and was consistently among the conference leaders in free throw percentage and steals. In 1999, she was involved in an Athletes in Action European tour team that travelled to Switzerland & Slovakia.

Jean-Paul, who graduated from the University of Manitoba in 2005 with a Bachelor of Science degree, is also a level two basketball official who has over eight years of officiating experience including refereeing in the CIS, the Manitoba provincial championships and at the midget girls’ nationals.