The next chapter in Noelle Mannen’s impressive basketball journey happened by complete accident.
This past spring, Mannen, then the associate head women’s basketball coach at Saint Martin’s University, reached out to a group called Play Overseas on behalf of her senior guard Kiana Rios. Play Overseas helps student athletes find postgraduate athletic scholarship opportunities.
But when Mannen reached out to representatives from the organization to explore overseas options for Rios, conversations eventually mirrored those Mannen had with the same group in the summer of 2023 when she was finishing her master’s degree in interdisciplinary studies at Oregon State University.
After her four-year basketball career at OSU, Mannen spoke with Play Overseas about a potential overseas career for herself, but the timing never made sense. She finished her thesis in September 2023, right when overseas universities would’ve required her to move in.
The concept of being a student athlete again had been put to rest in Mannen’s mind since the fall of 2023 until she reconnected with Play Overseas this past June when it came roaring back out of seemingly nowhere.
“I reached back out to them for [Rios] just to see like, ‘Hey, do you guys still work there? There’s this awesome player that I’d love to set you up with,’” Mannen said. “We started going back and forth once again, and after a little while, they were like, ‘You know, it’s not too late for you. You can do it too.’”
It has been three years since Mannen had suited up for the Oregon State Beavers and played competitive basketball outside of recreational leagues in the Portland area. She appeared in 76 games in the black and orange from 2019 to 2023 and started 23 games in her senior season. Mannen transferred to OSU as a walk-on after spending her freshman year away from basketball at the University of San Francisco. Once she moved on from OSU, she dabbled in coaching, including a one-year stint with the Saint Martin’s women’s basketball team in 2025-26.
This time, when the opportunity presented itself to be a student athlete overseas, Mannen jumped on it. She will continue her athletic and academic career in London at the University of East London (UEL) while pursuing a master’s degree in psychology.
“Even with playing basketball aside, I’ve always wanted to explore a different country, and getting to do that in tandem with basketball, it sounds perfect,” Mannen said. “I’m super stoked. It was a crazy path to get there because I did not think that it was gonna come back around like it did.”
Prior to her days as a Beaver, Mannen was getting buckets in Beaverton during her legendary career at Valley Catholic High School for the Valiants. She holds the school records in points, rebounds, assists and steals and was a two-time all-state selection. In addition to basketball, Mannen was a standout prep soccer, softball and track and field athlete.
She returned to Valley Catholic after graduating from OSU to become a basketball and softball coach before being promoted to the school’s assistant athletic director and assistant admissions director. She also coached youth basketball, including in the AAU circuit. Mannen missed being involved in college athletics and the level of competition, though, and she found an opening for an assistant coaching role with the Saint Martin’s women’s basketball team.
She had little familiarity with the Lacey area, but she had a prior connection to Saint Martin’s head coach Natalie Marlowe, who had helped work Oregon State’s summer basketball camps when Mannen was a player there. In Mannen’s lone season on the Saint Martin’s coaching staff, the Saints finished 18-10 and qualified for the GNAC Tournament.
“I was so excited about that opportunity, and I had the most wonderful year. It seemed like the perfect gateway opportunity to get into the college level and see if I like it,” Mannen said. “I can’t speak enough on how incredible of an experience it was. The culture at Saint Martin’s is such a great one of support and deep history and tradition. The team that I got to work with was so awesome. It was such a special year, and it was made even better by the fact that that group played some really awesome basketball.”
Mannen was mentally prepared to return to Saint Martin’s for her second year with the coaching staff in 2026-27. But then the shot-in-the-dark chance to continue her playing career overseas three years after her senior year at OSU presented itself in surprisingly rapid fashion. Once she created a profile through Play Overseas’ online platform that included her resume, highlights and academic transcripts, she received interest from coaches immediately, including from schools across England and Wales.
Mannen was intrigued by UEL’s location in the heart of the London Borough of Newham, and she appreciated the less demanding workload of a collegiate athlete in the United Kingdom versus at a Division I program in the United States. She said the schedule in London will feature two to three practices and one game per week, whereas she was involved with basketball six days a week and played two to three games per week at OSU. Not to mention long road trips, film sessions, and weightlifting.
Putting the word “student” before “athlete” was a factor in the decision for Mannen, who will work toward her second master’s degree, this one in psychology. Through her coaching journey, she became fascinated with how to coach athletes mentally and not just physically. She hopes to focus on sports psychology with her dissertation to improve her coaching style, which she described as a concoction of all of her coaches in her life, primarily longtime OSU head coach Scott Rueck.
“At my core, I’m a very relational coach with a very positive style. I’m gonna try to give as much energy as possible and build our players up as much as possible,” Mannen said. “With the whole psychology piece, I think confidence is such a huge factor in performance and in basketball and how people play. I want to really connect and have the players feel comfortable in that relationship.”
When she signed with UEL, Mannen reached out to her old strength coach from Oregon State to send her workouts to get back into competitive basketball shape. At the same time, she has been packing and working through the visa process before she flies overseas Aug. 31.
“It’s been chaotic. I’m excited to actually get over there and get settled,” she said. “I feel like I’ll be able to focus more on the basketball piece and try to get back into shape.”
Once the one-year experience is concluded in London, Mannen could potentially be picked up by a club overseas to extend her basketball career, but she someday hopes to return to coaching after her playing days are done, whenever that may be. She relishes the rare opportunity to return to collegiate competition after spending a year coaching college basketball at a high level at Saint Martin’s.
“I’m really excited to get to play again and see things through that coach’s lens,” Mannen said. “I learned so much about the game [through coaching], and there were times where I was like, ‘Man, I wish I had someone to tell me that when I was playing.’ I do think it’ll be a really cool perspective to go back and apply some of the things I’ve learned from the coaching perspective, and then vice versa. When I’m done playing again and come back to coaching, I’ll learn even more from having that player viewpoint once again.”
