Mix of youth and experience has Canada's Women's basketball team feeling good

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Coming off a fourth-place finish at the World Cup, Canada’s senior women’s basketball program has its confidence sky high with just under four weeks to go before they take part in their fourth consecutive Olympics.

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Team captain Natalie Achonwa has been a member of all four of those teams and heads to France with a number of familiar faces like co-captain Kayla Alexander, as well as soon-to-be three-time Olympians Kia Nurse and Nirra Fields.

Nurse is one of four current WNBA players on the roster joining Laeticia Amihere, Bridget Carleton, and Aaliyah Edwards. That foursome will join the team later this month in the final ramp up to the Games.

The team will welcome four first-time Olympians to the roster as well in Calgary’s Yvonne Ejim, Toronto’s Sami Hill, Montreal native Cassandre Prosper and 18-year-old Sudbury phenom Syla Swords.

That blend of youth and experience is new to the program which has traditionally been slow to change.

Swords wasn’t at yesterday’s roster unveiling but was a hot topic of discussion given her age and her game.

“Syla is an extremely talented player and I’m so glad to be her teammate,” Alexander said when asked if she ever imagined playing at an Olympics with someone so young. “Yeah I’m excited for the rest of Canada to see how amazing and just so incredible she is on the court.”

Hill, who was an alternate for Canada at the 2021 games in Toyko had similar high praise for the daughter of 2000 Olympian Shawn Swords.

“Syla is a special athlete and yes, I could talk for a long time about Syla, her motivation, her maturity,” Hill said. “Just being on the court with her you will forget that she’s 18, you’ll forget that it’s her second summer with the senior team. Her IQ is so high, she’s so calm, always ready to go and she’s just a joy on and off the court and a great person to be around.”

Just to get to these Games, Canada needed a little help and got it when Spain defeated Hungary by a single point in the final game of the Qualifying Tournament. That result gave Canada the third and final berth from that particular qualifier.

“We know we were honestly like two seconds away from not making the Olympics, Fields said. “So going in with that mindset knowing we are grateful to be here and almost didn’t make it, to have that chip on our shoulders going in, I think that’s going to be the mindset and to really take advantage of the moment.”

Also playing in Canada’s favour is the overall health of the team.

Even at the Worlds where Canada finished fourth, they didn not have Aaliyah Edwards who had some school conflicts and Nurse was not operating at 100% health at the time either.

That’s not an issue with the team 27 days away from its first game when it takes on France on July 29.

The road won’t be an easy one with host France and an always tough Australian team in Canada’s group, but at the Olympics easy paths are not expected.

Fields believes the experiences the veterans on this club have already shared will bode well for these Paris Games.

“I think we just have more time together,” Fields said when asked how this time around feels different. “This will be my third Olympics. But for the majority of them — I’ve played with Natalie, I’ve played with Kia. So just going into this Olympics, I feel like we’ve grown so much as individuals, as players that we’re just stronger. We have a strong relationship on the court, off the court. It just feels like a sisterhood.”

For Brampton native Shay Colley hearing the news that she had made the team was a combination of relief and excitement, relief that her persistence dealing with all the injuries she had overcome to get to this point was going to pay off and excitement that she was going to get a chance to improve on the 9^th place finish Canada had at her first Olympics three years ago in Tokyo.

Her first call, after learning she had made the team was to her teammate and confidante Kayla Alexander.

“The first one I told was Kayla, we’re very close, obviously my family but she was the first one,” Colley said. “She’s my go-to. When I’m having good days, bad days, I can only count on her to help me out, she’s gone through it with me. You don’t really know unless you’re going through it, she’s been right there by my side and she’s my support.”

It’s a similar bond felt throughout the roster that has both those within the team and those looking on from the outside considering Canada a strong threat to medal at these Games.