They'll never forget the packed house that chanted "Rio" when they won the FIBA Americas Championship in Edmonton to punch their ticket to the 2016 Olympic Games. They’ll forever cherish hearing their anthem play after defeating the United States in the gold medal final of the Toronto Pan Am Games.

But ask any veteran of the Senior Women’s National Team what their favourite moment with Canada Basketball is, and they all have the same answer:

"Qualifying for the London Olympics," SWNT captain Kim Gaucher says. "Canada Day. July 1, 2012.  "By far."

Four years on, those who were part of the 2012 SWNT maintain a special place in their hearts for the last day of the FIBA World Olympic Qualifying Tournament in Ankara, Turkey.

"We still call it our anniversary," smiles Lizanne Murphy.

With everything on the line, Canada beat Japan 71-63, becoming the final country to qualify for women’s basketball at the London Summer Games.

"No one expected it," point guard Shona Thorburn recalls. "It was the last-chance tournament; it was the last-chance game."

Team Canada’s triumph was magical enough on its own. But that it just so happened to occur on the same day the nation turned 145 is straight out of a fairytale.

"Qualifying for the 2012 Olympics was a goal I set for myself the first year I made the senior team, and four years later it happened," says Tamara Tatham, who is nearing 150 career games with the SWNT. "And it happened on Canada Day, which is amazing."

Canada’s lineup included just one player, Teresa Gabrielle, who was part of the SWNT when it last made the Summer Games, in 2000. London marked Canada’s return to Olympic women’s basketball after missing out in 2004 and 2008.

"That was such a big deal for us," says Michelle Plouffe, who at age 19 was the youngest player on the 2012 SWNT. “It was the first time in 12 years and that was actually my first summer with the senior team. So that was just an amazing summer."

Team Canada would add another chapter to its storybook summer, advancing to the quarterfinal round in London. The SWNT has been progressing markedly ever since, winning FIBA Americas silver in 2013, finishing fifth at the 2014 World Championship, and winning back-to-back gold on home soil at the Pan Am Games and Americas Championship last summer.

"Qualifying for Rio was amazing, especially in Edmonton, in Canada, and having all our fans there was just a wonderful experience, it’s something that we’ve never experienced before," Miranda Ayim says.

"But in 2012, it wasn’t expected that we were going to qualify and we had put in so much effort to go and beat the odds and when that finally happened you could kind of let out a sigh of relief. So that was the most exhilarating moment."

Happy anniversary.

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