Serap Yücesir

Serap Yücesir — Biography

Serap Yücesir is a former national basketball player who captained Fenerbahçe's women's team for many years and played power forward at 1.91 meters. She played a large part in Fenerbahçe's first Turkish Women's Basketball League title, won in 1998-99. Today she works away from the court as a pharmacist, and she also works as a coach.

She began basketball at 13 with Bayraklıspor in İzmir and continued at Urla Gençlik. She moved to Fenerbahçe in 1990 or 1991 and rose to become team captain. After 1999 Fenerbahçe won the league again in 2002, 2004 and 2006 with her, plus six Turkish Cups and five Presidential Cups, and in 2004-05 the team reached the Women's EuroCup final. She spent the 1997-98 season at Galatasaray and then returned to Fenerbahçe. In 2006-07 she played for Istanbul University and in 2007-08 for Panküp Kayseri TED Kolejliler, where she ended her career. With the national team she won silver at the 1997 Mediterranean Games in Bari and gold at the 2005 Games in Almería, Spain.

In 2010 she founded the Asistanbul Youth and Sports Club with her former teammate Arzu Özyiğit and coaches at a women's basketball school in Istanbul's Kartal district. A pharmacy graduate, Yücesir could not practice her profession during her playing years; she now runs her own pharmacy in Maltepe and has a son.