The Seattle Storm has decided to part ways with head coach Noelle Quinn, following a rocky 2025 season that saw the team struggle to stay in the playoffs despite a promising start. 

Insiders have reported that Quinn’s five-person coaching staff has also been let go, but the Storm have yet to confirm their firings. The search for a new head coach begins immediately, and will have to be resolved before the 2026 season begins in early May. 

“On behalf of the organization, I would like to thank Noelle for her time with the Storm,” said Storm GM Talisa Rhea. “Her commitment to the ongoing success of our organization and to furthering the development of our players was second to none. She put us in a position to win at the highest levels of the game, and for that, we are grateful.” 

Quinn has long supported Seattle’s championship endeavors. She’s a player-coach who ended her career as an athlete on a high note, working alongside the dream team of Sue Bird, Jewell Loyd, and Breanna Stewart during the Storm’s 2018 championship run. After retiring, she immediately found her place on the sidelines, helping out as an assistant coach. The Storm ran it back for their fourth championship in 2020. 

The next year, when former head coach Dan Hughes decided midseason to step away from the team, he chose to appoint Quinn as his successor. “I am excited to hand the reins to Noelle,” Hughes said at the time. “She is well positioned to do this job, and I am proud to have mentored her during my time here.” 

In her half-decade spent holding the reins, Coach Quinn was a steady hand who kept the Storm competitive, even as they faced storms of their own. She had to deal with the dream team splintering apart, unleashing messy emotions in the process. Bird continues to be celebrated in retirement, while Stewart left unceremoniously and Loyd’s departure was the result of a lot of toxic, off-court baggage between her and the coaching staff. While other teams got to enjoy the benefits of the WNBA’s flourishing present, Quinn was stuck dealing with the loose ends of the past. 

Still, to her credit, Quinn made sure the team was a regular fixture in the playoffs. The Storm only failed to make the postseason once in her head-coaching career, when a Loyd-dependent team saw their wins plummet in 2023. Quinn thankfully recognized the need for change, and in the offseason, began rebuilding the Storm around the dynamic, all-star duo of Skyler Diggins and Nneka Oguwumike. 

This year, the first fully without Bird, Loyd, and Stewart, should have been the season in which the Storm fully asserted their new identity, and the start of a successful future, with its on-court play authored fully by Quinn herself. Instead, the team suffered a brutal, six-game collapse in August and never quite recovered their momentum. 

The misfortune continued into the playoffs, as the Las Vegas Aces blew out the Storm by 30 points in their first postseason match. Seattle crawled back to almost reclaim the series, only to lose their final match by a gut-wrenching single point. The Aces have routinely spoiled Quinn’s postseason dreams: they’ve eliminated the Storm across three different years, including Sue Bird’s final game. 

Despite the heartbreak, Quinn remained proud of her players through the very end. “I just wanted it so bad for this group, because they worked so hard,” she said. “That’s the competitor in me. I played so much basketball, sometimes I wish I was out there with them.”