Unbeaten Hawks in rare air space
Humber women have been perfect in regular season last three years
It’s a Monday night, at the tail end of practice, when Humber Hawks basketball star Ceejay Nofuente takes her turn trying to drain a half-court shot.
Coach Ajay Sharma has allowed his troops, undefeated (60-0) over the past three seasons in Ontario Colleges Athletic Association regular-season play, to call out the shot they’d want to make in a game. The choice: a half-court bomb to win the game in the last second.
Nofuente drains one with very little body movement and keeps her wrist cocked in the shooting position long after the shot goes swish, looking over at her teammates with a smile.
“That’s the third one she made in this drill,” Sharma says.
That wrapped up the Hawks’ last practice before they flew out to Moncton, N.B., on Tuesday to open the Canadian college women’s basketball championship, where they are ranked No. 1 in the pre-tournament seedings.
There was no tension, no indication of pressure, at that final workout at Humber’s main athletic building off Highway 27. The Hawks have been down this road before, winning a national title in 2016, the first in 40 years for an OCAA women’s team in any sport — basketball, volleyball or soccer.
Nofuente represents the statistical ideal for a unique program shaped over the last seven years by Sharma. She is Humber’s all-time leader in points, free throws and assists, and the OCAA player of the year three times. She reached 1,000 points last season, her fourth at Humber, and was joined in the 1,000 point club this season by Aleena Domingo, a dominant forward who looks to Nofuente as something of a chosen one.
“I’ll tell you, at least 70 per cent of my points were on her assists,” Domingo says. “That’s the player she is.”
Nofuente was to learn this week whether she has earned a spot on Canada’s Commonwealth Games team. She made the development team last year, the only college player on a roster filled with U.S. and Canadian university players.
It’s all heady stuff for a quiet, church-going 24-year-old who is the product of an upbringing by her grandparents and uncles, who raised her in their Thorncliffe neighbourhood and encouraged her to love basketball as much as they did.
“Basketball was fun, all the time … and I followed my uncles to the gym. I just kind of hung out there,” Nofuente says. “I go to church twice a week and my grandparents took me there from the time I was young. I have a lot of people who support me there, and I’m grateful for that.”
Nofuente graduated out of Downsview Secondary School and quickly became the OCAA’s leading player. Shannon Kennedy, of St. Clair College, became the all-time leading scorer in OCAA history this season but there’s a championship pedigree in the Humber program. They have won the OCAA title four straight years.
Domingo effuses when she is asked why the Humber women are undefeated this season. She points to the coaching staff — Sharma and assistants Kingsley Hudson, Kern Lewis, Aycha Hamaoui, and Jeremy Alleyne. Domingo says Lewis, who works at Humber in the registration department, coaches her individually during his lunch hour. “I don’t know how he eats, or when,” she says.
The coaches’ dedication has been passed on to the players. “I took it upon myself.” Domingo says. “I’m in my last year, like Ceejay, and I went up to one of our second year players … she’s going to fill my shoes, so I went up to her and said, we’re going to the gym. We’re going to train and I’m going to make sure she does fill my shoes when I’m done.”
Practices are key to the Hawks’ success, mirroring the intensity and pressure they will face when a championship is one the line.
The girls separate into two groups, blue and white, and challenge each other in drills and scrimmages. Little games, like the half-court shooting drill, are an ongoing creation between the girls and coaching staff that get passed on from one team to the next. Ruth Holland hit a buzzer-beating threepointer to win the national title two years ago. Now she’s the team manager.
Several other former players were part of Monday’s practice, some more than two years removed from the program. When someone shines in practice, the players will stop the drill, hit a glam pose and maybe take a selfie, then resume with the work at hand.
Sharma, Domingo says, oversees it with wizardry, a coach who holds everyone accountable, every second he’s with them, but one who creates fun for the group as well. The coach had a connection with a local condo development company who provided a box at the Air Canada Centre in November for the girls to enjoy a Jay-Z concert together.
“You know, these girls give their days and nights to (the Hawks program), but that night, they lived like queens …” Sharma says, proudly.
For Nofuente, Monday’s last practice might have been more than just a final hurrah on her home court, a final go at the blue-and-white competitiveness. After five years, there was some emotion to confront. But not for long. “I left all my tears out there on that last game of the regular season,” Nofuente says. “I know I won’t be playing on this floor anymore, but I got a family out of it.”