Canada’s next generation knocking
NCAA’s Carleton, Colley quick learners in camp with national team elite
Undoubtedly they represent the next wave of Canadian women’s basketball, the two collegians do, but as they bang with and score on and defend against the best the country has to offer right now, one gets the impression the wave is upon us.
They are college players — Iowa State senior Bridget Carleton and Michigan State redshirt junior Shay Colley — but on this day, throughout this week, they are women holding their own against a Canadian senior team chock full of timehardened professionals who ply their trades in the best leagues in the world.
“I think we look at this like an opportunity,” Carleton said after a weekend workout at Ryerson’s Mattamy Athletic Centre with the team headed to the world championship later this month. “We’ve put the work in. It doesn’t matter our age. We know we deserve to be here and we’re going to prove that to ourselves, to the coaches, our teammates. Even though we are still in college, it really doesn’t matter too much.”
Carleton, a 21-year-old from Chatham, and Colley, a 22year-old born in Nova Scotia and trained in Brampton, are getting a first-hand look at what it takes to be an elite player in international basketball and have not looked out of place for a moment.
The six-foot-one Carleton and five-foot-nine Colley give as good as they get, and what they lack in experience they more than make up for in effort. And they learn. Every day they learn with an eye to the future.
“You have a lot of Olympian returners who came from 2016, so the physicality, how to play smart offence and just to be great all around to make it to the 2020 Olympics, that’s my ultimate goal,” Colley said.
“Me and Bridget, our paths to get here weren’t direct like some of the other players. We worked our way together. We came together on the journey here.
“We keep pushing each other. When I’m down, she’s helping me; when she’s down, I’m help- ing her. We help each other hand-in-hand.”
It’s probably a long shot to think that either one will be on the 12-woman roster that heads to the worlds in Spain ranked fifth in the world, a veteran team harbouring legitimate medal aspirations. But the chance to work every day with and against the bulk of the senior team will give them a great grounding for the future.
They are not total strangers — they were part of camps and exhibition series earlier this summer, and members of the gold medal-winning side at the AmeriCup FIBA Americas championship last summer — and that’s been a huge boost. The coaches know them, the other players know them and they know what’s expected of them.
“The sets we’re running, the tactics, the coaches, what they want on defence — just knowing that and practising that has been huge for us,” Carleton said. “We weren’t doing anything else this summer, so it was helpful to travel and play and get that experience.”
They are scrimmaging and working out daily with seasoned pros, picking up little tricks of the trade.
“Kia (Nurse) is an older vet, but she’s also the same age. Just taking from her the energy she plays with, the physicality,” Colley said. “And from Kim (Gaucher) and Nat (Achonwa), just taking the wisdom: when to make the right read, how to read your defender.
“Just little things, little tactics, because those are little things that are going to separate us from the other teams.”