Vikes host Badgers in exhibition game

Canada showed why it’s a medal contender in women’s basketball by opening with a comprehensive victory over China on Saturday at the Rio Olympics. A part of the future of the Olympic team could be on display tonight at 7 p.m. in CARSA Gym when the University of Victoria Vikes host the University of Wisconsin Badgers of the NCAA Big Ten in an exhibition game.

National U-18 team guard Kendra Van Leeuwen, who led Canada at the 2016 FIBA Americas U-18 in Chile, is an incoming Badgers freshman from Brantford, Ont. The Badgers also have a connection to another potential future Canadian Olympian as Dakota Whyte of Toronto, silver medallist with Canada at the 2015 World University Games, graduated this past spring from Wisconsin.

UVic head coach Dani Sinclair also has a good bead on the future of Canadian women’s basketball and has just returned from Spain, where she was assistant coach of seventh-place Canada at the FIBA U-17 world championships.

Van Leeuwen and Whyte are part of an Ontario trend. Vikes stars Amira Giannattasio and Jenna Bugiardini, both from Hamilton, are also products of the rich recruiting vein Ontario has provided recently in basketball. It includes Canadian Rio Olympic team star Kia Nurse, also from Hamilton, who starred at NCAA powerhouse UConn.

Now Giannattasio and Bugiardini are trying to revive the glory years of western basketball, when UVic won eight CIS national championships under Kathy Shields.

A big step in that quest happens this season as the Vikes are building toward hosting the 2017 CIS national championship tournament at CARSA in March.

“We’re not focusing ahead to nationals [the Vikes have an automatic berth as host], but on the process and on working hard all year,” said Giannattasio.