FAMILY TIES SHE CAN COUNT ON
Kia Nurse getting used to the hoopla
The fresh, young star of Canada’s National Women’s Basketball team takes the LRT to and from practice, and Kia Nurse also is learning to love naps.
Both are routine daily activities for Team Canada in Edmonton, their second home, where they’ll spend the next two weeks working to earn a berth at the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro.
Nurse warmed up for the 10-team FIBA Americas Women’s Basketball Championship (Aug. 9-16), by dazzling a national TV audience with her 33-point tour de force in Canada’s 81-73 victory over Team USA in the gold medal final at the Pan American Games in Toronto.
As head coach Lisa Thomaidis noted Sunday, Canada’s women’s team is not a secret anymore.
And Nurse, just 19, suddenly is the face of this emerging team, one that for decades has been starved for the affection lavished on the women’s national hockey and soccer teams and stars like Hayley Wickenheiser and Christine Sinclair.
It is early days, but if Nurse does become that crossover basketball player, Thomaidis has few concerns about her being able to handle it.
“I think if it was any other 19-year-old, I’d have concerns,” Thomaidis said. “But working with Kia for the last three years, she has that makeup and that personality and that poise.
“She can handle it. Certainly it’s a lot to handle, but she comes from a family that deals with this kind of pressure all the time.”
Nurse, known in Edmonton for her basketball exploits with the University of Connecticut and the national ream, and the fact she is the 19-year-old sister of Oilers defence prospect Darnell Nurse, has been handling plenty this year on a variety of big stages.
As a freshman, she helped the University of Connecticut win the NCAA Women’s championship, she won a Pan Am gold medal and now has a chance to help Canada punch its ticket to the Rio de Janeiro Olympic Games.
She and Darnell were Pan Am torch bearers in their hometown of Hamilton, and she carried Canada’s flag at the Games closing ceremony.
“There has definitely been a lot going on, but, I mean they’re really amazing things that I’m really privileged to be a part of,” Nurse said following practice Sunday. “It has been really fun to be part of everything that has come along ... and I couldn’t be more happy to be a part of it.”
It has to help that Nurse’s character has been forged in a family of intensely competitive athletes who also are a uniquely supportive resource in pressure situations of all kinds.
“Absolutely,” Nurse said. “They’ve had the attention and they’ve dealt with all this stuff. So it’s easy for me to pick up the phone and say, ‘How did you deal with it?’ and then decide from which person I like the answer best.”
Kia’s dad, Richard, played pro football for the hometown TigerCats. Her mother, Cathy, played varsity basketball at McMaster. Her older sister, Tamika, played NCAA basketball at Oregon and Bowling Green.
Darnell has been an OHL star for the Sault Ste. Marie Greyhounds, helped Canada’s National Junior Team win gold at the World Junior Hockey Championship, and was chosen seventh over all in the 2013 NHL draft by the Oilers.
“Darnell has some good answers ... because he’s kind of dealt with that, too,” Nurse said. “It’s just kind of ‘be you’ and ‘do you’ and ‘do what you do best, stay within what you know and what you love to do,’ and it’s all good from there.”
The advice came in handy at the Pan Am Games when the team seemed to thrive with all the scrutiny that came from their success.
“I think it’s really great all the attention our team is getting as a whole because not a lot of people did know about us until we finally got to play some meaningful games at home, and then we performed as well as we did,” Nurse said. “Our veterans, especially, have worked through the trenches to turn this program into what it is today, so they deserve every part of it.”
Followers of the team will already know Michelle and Katherine Plouffe, the former Harry Ainlay and U.S. university stars who are versatile role players with the national team and exemplary sport ambassadors away from the court.
Nathalie Achonwa, the former Notre Dame University star who now plays for the Indiana Fever of the WNBA, is another emerging star.
But it was Nurse who put her stamp on things in Toronto, becoming an instant star to the casual sports fan.
“The timing of everything is what made it so special,” Thomaidis said. “We knew she had it in her. But the timing, to be able to do it at that time when the most pressure is on, speaks, I think, to her confidence, her demeanour and composure.”
Nurse learned an important lesson, as well.
“I learned to just be confident in myself. Sometimes I sell myself a little bit short with what I can do.”