Rugby star Kish retires after sacrificing her body for Canada
TORONTO — After sacrificing her body for Canada for 13 years, Jen Kish called it quits Monday.
The former Canadian rugby sevens skipper had planned to retire in July at the end of the season. But hip and neck injuries forced the 29-year-old from Edmonton to move up that retirement date.
The news drew a flurry of congratulations.
“What a LEGEND,” tweeted Canadian international soccer goalkeeper Stephanie Labbe.
“You truly are extraordinary. World Class, a Legend,” echoed former teammate Mandy Marchak.
“An idol to many young girls out there. You have paved the way!” tweeted former men’s captain John Moonlight, who retired last week to become a firefighter in his native Pickering.
The accolades stunned Kish. “I’m at a loss for words,” she said in an interview. “I just see myself as somebody who just played a sport with some of her best friends. And along the way we inspired a couple of people.
“To have people send such nice messages, telling me they’re going to miss seeing me play the sport I love, yeah, it definitely brings emotions to it. I’m just grateful at being able to spend so many years in the Canadian jersey.”
Kish leaves the sport with a gold medal from the 2015 Pan American Games, silver from the ’13 Rugby World Cup Sevens and bronze from the ’16 Olympics.
A nominee for world sevens player of the year in ’13, she played in 134 matches on the world sevens circuit, scoring 34 tries and 170 points.
“There are very few in the game like her,” said Canada coach John Tait.
Kish’s hard-nosed play took a toll.
Her recent injury woes started prior to Rio in May 2016 when she was slammed into the turf at the Clermont Sevens.
She finished the game but was left with a concussion and a neck injury that has since been exacerbated.
Kish has been playing though two bulging discs in her neck, along with some disc degeneration and bone spurs.
Last May, Kish cracked her pelvis on the first day of competition in Langford, B.C. Amazingly she finished the tournament after sitting out the quarter-final because she could hardly walk. A subsequent scan also turned up a hip labral tear that will require surgery.
Kish’s last outing for Canada was at the Sydney stop of the World Series circuit in January. She took part in a camp in San Diego prior to the Commonwealth Games, reaggravating her neck injury.
“Ultimately after speaking to many specialists, the only way that my body is going to start to get better is if I stop playing,” she said. “At the end of the day, I play a contact sport and every hit I take or give, it puts a little but more damage on the body and mentally it’s debilitating because it’s tough to deal with the pain every single day.”
“And I’m not even 30 yet,” she added. “I turn 30 in July.”
Doctors told her she has the neck of a 60-year-old. Her response was to ask whether there was a danger of paralysis. While the answer was no, the question was could she play through the pain or the neck cramps.
“I have no control of when my neck decides to just act up and seize,” she said. “It was like a calf cramp but in your neck. It’s quite painful.”
Surgery is an option down the line but that could limit her neck mobility. The hope is that not playing will reduce the pain.
Her body a canvas of tattoos under a shock of blond hair, Kish is hard to miss. The colourful exterior covers a complex interior.
“She self-admittedly sometimes just overthinks things,” said Tait. “She wears her heart on her sleeve.”
In fact, Kish’s body is an inkcovered canvas that tells its own story.
One arm reads “Dance like no one is watching, Sing like no one is listening.” The other arm reads “Laugh like you’ve never been hurt, Live like it’s heaven on earth.”
Her biceps say “Live true” and “Love life.” Another design reads “What I do today is important.”
No longer part of the daily training group, Kish yielded the captaincy to Ghislaine Landry after Rio.
But Tait, whose playing career was also cut short by a neck injury, said she always led by example on the field.