Hamilton athlete Kia Nurse spotlights women’s basketball in Canada
- Oluseyi Olomodosi
- 13 Nov 2019
Despite being one of Canada’s biggest women’s basketball stars, Kia Nurse says she’s had to get used to a nomadic lifestyle in order to make a living.
Nurse has dominated at every level of basketball. She led Hamilton’s St. Thomas Moore Catholic Secondary School to back-to-back-to-back OFSAA championships in 2011, 2012, and 2013. Coming out of high school, she was approached by about 50 different college basketball programs but chose the University of Connecticut. She had a standout NCAA career, culminating in winning a national championship in 2016.
After being drafted 10th overall to the WNBA in 2018, Nurse quickly became one of the league’s top players and was named a starter for the 2019 All-Star Game in just her second season. Her dominance has also extended to the international stage, where she has helped Team Canada win gold at the 2015 Pan American Games and battled through injury to help the team make the 2016 Olympics quarter-finals in Rio.
Nurse is currently in Edmonton with the national team for an Olympic qualification tournament. Her main focus is on helping Canada turn its fourth-in-the-world ranking – a program best – into a podium finish in 2020. To get to the tournament in Edmonton, Nurse had to travel 20 hours all the way from Australia, where she plays professionally in the WNBA offseason so she can make a year-round income.
This is fairly common for female athletes in North America, who unfortunately do not receive the same amount of attention or compensation as their male counterparts. According to Nurse, all of Canada’s national team members play overseas during the WNBA offseason, effectively committing them to two separate basketball seasons and year-round play without the lengthy offseason or million dollar paycheques their male peers enjoy.
That’s why Nurse, her teammates, and so many of her fellow professional women’s basketball players take immense pride in their work and embrace their platform as an opportunity to keep building the profile of women’s sports so that the young girls looking up to them today can enjoy professional basketball careers without having to play in two leagues to sustain themselves.
Don’t just play the game, change it. #JUMPMAN pic.twitter.com/v5NamZwF8B
— Jordan (@Jumpman23) October 30, 2019
Through all the travel miles, long seasons, and non-existent off-seasons, the number one thing that fuels Nurse and her peers is the same as any other athlete – competitive drive. At 23, Kia Nurse is playing some of the best basketball of her career, and is in Edmonton on a mission. Playing in Rio as a 20 year old was a great accomplishment, but losing in the quarter-finals still stings her three years later.
Her growth and success since then have only made her more and more confident and driven to taste Olympic success. As one of Canada’s biggest stars, she will surely play a major role in the success of the team – a spotlight well earned.
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