Finding her passion on the farm
After a year away from the game, Fraser Valley star returns better than ever
It’s the same jersey she donned the first three years of her CIS basketball career, but after figuring she was hanging it up for good following the 2013-14 season, Kayli Sartori wears it once more, this time with sartorial splendour.
“To be honest, my idea was not to come back at all,” the 6-foot1 forward and Abbotsford native explained earlier this week.
She left the game in the spring of 2014, hot on the heels of helping her team, the Fraser Valley Cascades, to a third-place finish at the CIS national championships.
“I was struggling,” she continued. “When you’re immersed in something for so many years, with the same routine and the same schedule, you can lose sight of who you are. I hid it from the team because it wouldn’t have helped them. But I knew I wasn’t in it for the right reasons. I didn’t love the game anymore.”
Absence, of course, can make the heart grow fonder.
In Sartori’s case, an entire year spent working on her family’s farm, one which allowed her to contemplate the vagaries of life, resulted in a decision to return to school and the court this season. The best part of all? As hard as it is to believe an athlete could come back better than ever after not touching a basketball for a year, a fact Sartori swears is the truth, she has returned as one of the most complete players in the nation. Sartorial splendour indeed. The Cascades (7-5) begin a twogame series Friday in Edmonton against the Explorer Division-leading MacEwan Griffins (9-3). The same player who averaged 10.2 points-per-game in the final season before her retirement is now leading the entire Canada West Conference in scoring at 19 per game.
It doesn’t stop there.
With more responsibilities heaped upon her this season, Sartori is also third in the conference in steals (2.8 spg), fourth in blocks (1.6 bpg), eighth in assists (3.7 apg) and 11th in rebounds (7.5 rpg), while shooting career highs from both the field (45.1 per cent) and from beyond the three-point arc (34.8 per cent).
“When I left school, I thought that I would travel and experience new cultures but I just ended up back on the farm,” laughed Sartori, who last season helped her father by milking cows and tending to the acres of hops the family grows and harvests for the local craft beer industry.
“I moved back home. I was outside all day long. I bought two horses and I started riding again. I don’t know how it all happened.”
In the midst of her grassroots experience, UFV sent one of its agriculture program students to the Sartori farm for a work practicum.
“We became friends and she told me about the agriculture program,” Sartori said. “I didn’t even know UFV offered one. I just thought to myself, ‘I want to go back to school, and I really want to play basketball again.’”
Armed with a new-found passion for farming, she made a switch in majors from criminology to agriculture, and followed it with a smooth glide back to the basketball court.
“Kayli was always a special talent,” UFV head coach Al Tuchscherer said, noting Sartori was named MVP in 2011 while leading W.J. Mouat to the B.C. Triple A title, and later honoured as a member of The Province’s Head of the Class. “That year away was a real eye-opener. It gave her clarity and direction to everything.”
Most importantly, it helped her appreciate the great gifts she has been given.
“It’s a question that is hard to answer,” she began when asked what she gained by walking away. “I didn’t set foot in a gym. I didn’t touch a basketball. And that changed me. Before, I didn’t understand the person I was without basketball. Now, I have a new respect for the game. I love it more. It’s a whole new passion.”