Žana Lelas

Žana Lelas was a silver medalist for Yugoslavia at the 1988 Seoul Olympics. She began playing basketball at age 13 in the Women’s Basketball Club Jugoplastika, later moving to Šibenik’s Elemes, with which she won the Yugoslav Cup in 1990 and the last championship of the former Yugoslavia in 1991. In 1992 she also helped Yugoslavia win a silver medal at the European Championships in Tel Aviv. She was a member of the Yugoslav national team from 1986-91 and then played for Croatia from 1991-2000. With Croatia, she competed in the European Championships in 1996 and 1999.

Lelas moved around quite a bit as she played with Cenex in Sarajevo, Cepsi in Tenerife, Zagreb’s Centar Banka, with which she won two championships and the Croatian Cup, Ljubljana’s Ježice, Strasbourg in France, Messina in Italy, Šibenik’s Jolly, Zaragoza and Burgos in Spain, returning in 2006 to Zagreb, when she played for ŽKK Croatia until the end of her career in 2008. At the end of her career she started the Žana Lelas Basketball Academy in 2016, helping coach and teach young girls and boys.