Nurse going to great lengths for Canada
TORONTO Canada’s Kia Nurse wants to step onto an Olympic podium so badly she plans to take a break from an Australian league title defence next month to return home to compete in a qualifying event for the 2020 Tokyo Games.
For Nurse, a roughly 20-hour trek to Canada from Australia one month into the Canberra Capitals’ Women’s National Basketball League season is a small price to pay if it improves her chances of leaving Tokyo with a medal.
“For us, we didn’t reach our goal of getting on the podium in Rio (at the 2016 Olympics) and that’s what we want to go after again,” Nurse said during a recent Olympic team event. “Our team is really, really different than what we had in Rio. Everybody is really developed ... so it’s all about continuing to work towards that goal.”
Nurse, who is the face of Canadian women’s basketball, was part of the squad that fell in the quarter-finals in Rio and feels that loss will prove to be a learning experience for a team comprised of veteran and well-developed younger players.
The 23-year-old guard was not with the national team last month in Puerto Rico for the FIBA Women’s Americup — the first of a three-stage qualification process for Tokyo — during which Canada lost in the final to the United States.
Nurse said that run, during which fifth-ranked Canada reached the podium for the eighth time in the last nine editions of the Americup despite missing key players, was a testament to the team’s depth.
“It just shows our team has always been a team that is more than the sum of its parts,” said Nurse, who this year was named a WNBA all-star after being the second-leading scorer for the New York Liberty.
The result secured a ticket to Edmonton for a Nov. 14-17 Olympic pre-qualifying tournament, where Canada, the Dominican Republic, Cuba and Puerto Rico square off with two spots in February’s final global qualification event up for grabs.
These are the types of tournaments Nurse lives for after having heard many times before from older players about the struggles the national team used to endure. She refuses to consider a return to those days.
“They have told us all of the horror stories about how people never really wanted to play against them because it wasn’t worth it for them,” Nurse said.
“But now we are at this place in the world where we can go to great tournaments all the time and people want to play us in exhibition games just so that we can have a friendly and it’s a great opportunity for both sides.”