Lily Maxwell
Blanca Quiñonez was just 13 years old when she left her family in Ecuador to play club basketball in Italy. Two years later, she was making her professional debut for Magnolia Campobasso in Italy’s Serie A1 professional basketball league. Now at just age 19, she is a star forward for the UConn Huskies.
Born August 3, 2006, in Milagro, Ecuador, Blanca started playing basketball at age five after attending a local summer camp with her twin brother and older brother. While she played in Europe for years, Blanca opened up to college recruitment in April 2024 after watching that year’s Final Four and taking note of the growth of women’s college basketball in the United States. Interest from top Division I programs followed immediately. In October 2024, she verbally committed to UConn without having visited the campus, becoming the first player from South America in the program’s history.
The 6-foot-2 forward, nicknamed “Blanquita” by her family, Blanca remains close to her family even if she can’t be near them geographically. “I’m very attached to my family—they are a fundamental pillar for me—but I think that when you take a leap like this, you focus on the person you can become in the future,” she told CT Insider. “And I think that’s something that helped me stay firm with this decision and not want to turn back.”
Here, get to know Blanca Quiñonez’s family:
Blanca’s father Guillermo
Her father is said to have worked long hours to support Blanca and her two brothers, though details about his profession have not been publicly reported. “We sacrificed so much to be able to take care of my family,” Guillermo told USA Today. “To see my kids successful and achieve what they want, that is all I could ask for.”
Blanca’s mother Fabiola
Her mother, also a former basketball player, was the one who introduced Blanca to the sport at age five when she took her to summer camp, where her athletic interests first developed. Fabiola has said in interviews that Blanca was very shy as a child, which made her initial move away from home much harder. “She was a girl who didn’t speak. She only ever said two to three words,” Fabiola told USA Today. “To see her now, speaking three languages, to see how she has developed—she took advantage of every second of distance from her parents.”
Blanca’s older brother Joel
Blanca has two siblings: a twin brother named Jaime and an older brother named Joel. “With the three of us—my twin, my older brother, and me—whenever we were together, we were total chaos,” Blanca told CT Insider about playing sports together growing up.
Blanca’s twin brother Jaime
Blanca’s twin brother Jaime is also a professional athlete. Jaime is a pro soccer player who has competed for domestic clubs including Alianza Milagro, Emelec, Técnico Universitario, 9 de Octubre, and Orense, and had a trial with C.F. Pachuca of Liga MX in Mexico. She described him to the Ecuadorian newspaper El Comercio as “a fighter with talent and discipline.” Blanca even played soccer before committing fully to basketball. She credits the sport with sharpening her agility, court vision, and stamina, although she has said in interviews she only stuck with soccer for so long to spend more time with her twin.
“We were inseparable. We played all day, we challenged each other, we helped each other,” she told the newspaper. “Leaving him was the hardest thing. But I understood that this leap was necessary if I wanted to grow as an athlete.”
Rachel King (she/her) is a news writer at Town & Country. Before joining T&C, she spent nearly a decade as an editor at Fortune. Her work covering travel and lifestyle has appeared in Forbes, Observer, Robb Report, Cruise Critic, and Cool Hunting, among others. Originally from San Francisco, she lives in New York with her wife, their daughter, and a precocious labradoodle. Follow her on Instagram at .
