Love lost in Apeldoorn
Suddenly, Mac star had left her happy place: Basketball
Listening to her talk about basketball is usually a master course in optimism and enthusiasm. She and the game are best friends. To her the only thing bad about the sport is the final horn because it makes you stop playing. If she has a ball and a basket, she’s happy. If there’s someone to play with, she’s thrilled. If there’s someone to play against, she’s delighted.
Pretty much every day she wakes up thinking about the game, goes to bed thinking about it and finds as much time in between those two moments to be on a court playing it.
So hearing Danielle Boiago describe why she’s home in Canada today instead of being on the court 6,000 kilometres away for Wednesday night’s playoff game with her Dutch team is rather stunning.
“Unfortunately,” she says, “I kind of lost my love for the game while I was there.”
Wait, are we talking about Danielle Boiago? The Canadian university player of the year and finalist for the Golden Horseshoe Athlete of the Year, Danielle Boiago?
We are? Impossible. No way. “I lost my drive and my love to play,” she reiterates. Even she’s shocked at this. When she was offered a contract to play pro in the Netherlands after completing her recordsetting career with the McMaster Marauders, she was delirious.
Someone wanted to pay her to do what she’d be doing anyway? C’mon, that’s a no-brainer.
Still, she reached out to some former teammates and other friends who’d done the same thing to get their advice.
It was mixed. Some loved it, others found it rough. Again though, it was basketball. How bad could it possibly be?
The money wasn’t great with the FSG Royal Eagles. Actually, it was so little that she doesn’t really want to discuss numbers. But that’s not the point.
You go over, you play well in your rookie season and establish yourself and by your second or third year you can start cashing in.
It started OK, even if the folks running the team website seemed to think she’d played in the NCAA.
A two-week trip to Italy to kick off the season was terrific. But, once the players returned to their home base in Apeldoorn to settle into the season, things changed.
The expectations were different from what she’d grown accustomed to at Mac. Some players didn’t show up for practice. Accountability wasn’t stressed. The style of play was different. And crowds were nonexistent.
“A lot of (locals) didn’t even know there was a team in town,” she says. “There were sometimes a couple of parents there.”
When the other two imports decided to leave, she was the only nonlocal player left. She’d spend her off-days exploring the area by herself. Her remaining teammates were nice enough but when they all spoke Dutch in the dressing room and on the court, she felt rather alone.
She picked up a couple words. Lekker, which roughly meant “Good job,” came in handy when someone made a good play.
“And hello is hallo,” she laughs. “That’s easy.”
But by November everything had combined to beat her down. The St. Thomas More grad wasn’t eager to go to practice anymore. That had never happened before. Basketball had always been her happy place. Now it was making her miserable.
When her parents came for a visit, they saw it. Her mom told her she could come home whenever she wanted. Boiago called her agent, told him she now hated the game — yes, she said “hated” — and was done. She jumped on a plane back to Canada and didn’t touch a ball for more than a month.
Then, one morning she woke up, headed down to the basement, pumped up two deflated balls and started dribbling. A few days later she showed up at her mom’s school — she’s a principal — and started shooting hoops in the gym.
Somehow, her love for basketball was back.
On Wednesday, around the same time she would’ve been helping the Royal Eagles knock off the Grasshoppers, Mac’s all-time leading scorer was back in the Burridge Gym playing for McMaster’s scout team helping the Marauders prepare for their games against Lakehead this weekend.
She’s still working out and even though she’s applied for teacher’s college, she won’t rule out another crack at pro ball overseas. If the situation is right.
“I’m just going to be way pickier,” she says.
If that doesn’t happen? If this is the last chapter of her competitive basketball-playing life?
“I went and I have no regrets,” she said.