The Register Citizen (Torrington, CT)
Nurse hoped for better showing
Canada finished 7th at Olympics
This was not the first time Kia Nurse walked off the court following the loss but it might have been on the most painful experienced of her young life.
As thrilled as the UConn junior guard was to get her first taste of the Olympics, she headed to Rio with a very attainable goal of leading Canada to a medal.
Canada faced France in the quarterfinals with the knowledge that a victory would give them a chance to play for a medal while a loss eliminated them from medal
contention. Although Nurse was struggling to find the range on her jump shot, Canada was up by 13 points when Kim Gaucher scored with 7:30 left in the first half and took a five-point lead into halftime before it all began to unravel.
Nurse has had some many magical performances for her national team but she seemed to be pedaling uphill throughout the entire game. Perhaps it was the case that she missed much of the preparation time leading into the Olympics due to an offseason surgery, it simply wasn’t her day or France was able to turn her into a jump shooter by cutting off her aggressive drives to the basket, but Nurse couldn’t hit a basket. She finished 3 of 17 from the field in the 68-63 loss en route to a seventhplace finish.
While her initial reaction was one of frustration, her emotions did really start to overwhelm her until she took a look around the locker room.
Nurse could help but think about the sacrifices that 34-year-old Shona Thorburn, 32-year-old Gaucher and Lizanne Murphy and 31-year-old Tamara Tatham had put into getting the Canadian national team program to the point of being able contend for Olympic glory.
Canada didn’t even qualify for the Olympics in 2004 and 2008 and now they were agonizingly close to reaching the medal round.
“My whole thing is we had three vets who were finished with the national team no matter what the outcome was and see how they carried themselves every day, the pride and passion they played with each and every day for the last four years of my career and all the years they were with the team,” Nurse said. “It was a shame we couldn’t finish it off and the fairy tale for them and everything they put into the program. It was obviously disappointing but we are extremely proud of how far Canada basketball has come, when those ranking came out and we were six, we bumped up three spots that is just a testament of how far Canada basketball has come.”
Nurse was hoping to return home with a medal. She joked that she would leave it with her parents and point out to her brother Darnell, a defenseman for the NHL’s Edmonton Oilers, that despite the remarkable number of trophies he has accumulated, he couldn’t have topped her achievement of earning an Olympic medal. Those conversations just may happen one day but not at the current time.
As time has gone on Nurse has learned the appreciate everything that her national team has been able to accomplish instead of a focusing on her disappointing performance against France.
“Every summer when I come back here and put my dreams (in focus) again,” Nurse said, “I look back at my summer and realize how fortunate I was to have that experience, thinking about it if you want to be an experienced player you have to keep on playing. I’ve been fortunate to have that extra experience, find all of my strengths and weaknesses and work through them.”
As Nurse referenced, the Canadian team will look somewhat different four years from now. The future of the team will rest with the seven members of the squad 25 or younger. Canada combined to go 9-3 in the 2016 FIBA Americas U18 Championships and FIBA U17 World Championships so perhaps players from those teams will be in the mix. There are also plenty of Canadian stars opening eyes at the collegiate level so it will be interesting to see what the team looks like in two years at the World Championships and in four years time as well.
“It is starting to get more towards my age group so all the players that I played with in the age divisions,” Nurse said. “They are doing great things in the NCAA level, in the pro level overseas, for them to come up to the next level and play on the national team I think it is going to great.”