Sarah Nurse owns a Silver Medal won at the 2018 Winter Olympics in South Korea. Now she’s mining for gold.
Nurse, a forward for Toronto Furies of the Canadian Women’s Hockey League, was named to Team Canada for the 2019 International Ice Hockey Federation Women’s WorldChampionship April 4-14 in Espoo, Finland.
Sarah Nurse played for Canada at the 2018 Winter Olympics and will represent her country for the first time at the IIHF Women’s World Championship in Finland next month (Photo/Hockey Canada).
The tournament will be Nurse’s IIHF world championship debut but she’ll be in some familiar company. Fifteen other players from Canada’s 2018 Winter Olympic squad will join her in Finland.
“The players we have selected have had success at various levels of their careers, both nationally and internationally, and we’re excited to get started in Finland,” Gina Kingsbury, Hockey Canada’s director of women’s national teams, said.
Canada is seeking its 11th gold medal but its first since 2012. And Nurse has the goal-scoring skill to help them do it.
Nurse has emerged as a star for the Furies in her CWHL rookie season. She scored 26 points (14 goals, 12 assists) in 26 regular season games. She has one post-season goal so far for the Furies.
Nurse comes from a highly competitive sports family. Her brother, Isaac Nurse, is a forward for the Hamilton Bulldogs of the Ontario Hockey League. The siblings are cousins of Edmonton Oilers defenseman Darnell Nurseand New York Liberty basketball point guard Kia Nurse, who represented Canada at the 2016Olympics in Rio de Janeiro.
The jersey that Canadian forward Sarah Nurse wore and the stick that defender Brigette Lacquette used at the 2018 Winter Olympics are in the Hockey Hall of Fame (Photo/Phil Pritchard/HHOF)
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When it comes to covering women’s ice hockey, Erica L. Ayala has it locked down! She traveled to Toronto to cover the 2019 Canadian Women’s Hockey League All-StarGame. Below is the sister’s dispatch from the all-star weekend.Erica will be rocking the mic at the 2019 National Women’s Hockey League All-Star Game in Nashville next month as part of an all-female broadcast crew. You can follow her at https://ericalayala.com/.
TORONTO – Over 30 of the best and brightest stars of the Canadian Women’s HockeyLeague competed at Scotiabank Arena Sunday night at the 2019 All-Star Game. Three players of color – Brigette Lacquette,Sarah Nurse, and Jessica Wong – were among the top CWHL stars.
Wong and Team Gold shutdown Nurse, Lacquetteand the rest of Team Purple to secure an 8-4 win to cap All-Star Weekend. Canadian Olympian Brianne Jenner tallied three goals to lead all scorers and became the third player to record a hat trick in a CWHL All-Star Game (Jessica Jones and Jillian Saulnier, 2017).
Markham Thunder goaltender Liz Knox and Calgary Inferno defender Brigette Lacquette conduct ceremonial face-off at the 2019 CWHL All-Star Game in Toronto (Photo/Chris Tanouye).
Ahead of All-Star Weekend, Lacquette was voted captain of Team Purple by fans, receiving 55% of the vote. “To see the percentages was kind of crazy to me,” Lacquette told the media Saturday.
The Dauphin, Manitoba native played college hockey at the University of Minnesota-Duluth before being drafted to the Calgary Inferno. She won a Clarkson Cupwith the Inferno in her rookie season and returned again to the CWHL Clarkson Cup Final in the 2016-17 season. However, this is her first All-Star appearance in her four-year professional career. Lacquette ranks second among defenders with 17 points (2 goals, 15 assists).
Calgary Inferno defender Brigette Lacquette.
Lacquette was humbled to serve as captain of Team Purple and represent her country and the Indigenous community at center ice Sunday.
“This past year, I’ve been visiting a lot of Indigenous communities and whatnot, sharing my story. I think that helps with [visibility] and shows them they can really achieve anything they set their mind to,” Lacquette shared over the weekend.
Hamilton, Ontario-native Sarah Nurse joined Lacquette on Team Purple for the weekend. Like Brigette, Nurse enjoys being a role model for young players, especially black players. Nurse played NCAA Division I hockey at the University of Wisconsin and was recently named to the WCHA 20th Anniversary Team.
After Wisconsin, Nurse made her first Canadian Olympic team and earned silver at the 2018 PyeongChang Winter Games. She was pre-drafted to the Toronto Furies for the 2018-19 season and is second in scoring (10 goals, 9 assists) behind veteran Natalie Spooner.
Toronto Furies forward Sarah Nurse, who played for Canada at the 2018 Winter Olympics.
Being a member of the Toronto Furies, Nurse and her teammates were very busy promoting the All-Star Game leading up to Sunday. From photo shoots to clinics, and TV appearances, it was a whirlwind.
One day, Nurse hopes to draw the Black Girl Hockey Club north of the border to a Toronto Furies game.
“I follow them on Twitter,” said Nurse of the women’s hockey fan group. “That would be so cool. There are a lot of Canadian cities that have hockey and I think it would be absolutely incredible. I heard they went out to Washington and that actually got a lot of media coverage. It was so cool to hear about that.”
Jessica Wong was drafted as a starting defender by Team Gold captain Liz Knox. She represented both Canada and China in Toronto on Sunday. Wong grew up in Nova Scotia and played two seasons with the Calgary Inferno upon graduating from Minnesota-Duluth.
The CWHL Purple and Gold All-Star Teams (Photo/Chris Tanouye).
She was retired when she heard about the CWHL expansion to China last season. She dusted off the skates to accept the challenge of growing the women’s game in a place close to her heart. Wong has a grandmother originally from Shenzhen, the city that is home to the Shenzhen KRS (Kunlin Red Stars) Vanke Rays expansion team. She jumped at the opportunity to come out of retirement and connect to her familial roots. Wong is a top-five scorer for Shenzhen with three goals and 11 assists.
Shenzhen KRS Vanke Red Stars defender Jessica Wong.
As part of the weekend, CWHL All-Stars participated in community events at the RonaldMcDonald House,MLSE Launchpad, and the Canadian Blood Donation Clinic. Nurse and Furies teammates Renata Fast and Mellisa Channel participated in a special series sponsored by Adidas Canada. The Furies All-Stars hosted clinics, panel discussions and more for two youth teams – the Ancaster Avalanche and Burlington Barracudas. The youth teams were also hooked up with some Adidas gear and the ultimate behind-the-scenes experience at the All-Star Game.
“Yesterday, the Community Day went really well,” commented CWHL Commissioner and recent Hockey Hall of Fame inductee Jayna Hefford Sunday evening. “At the end of the game, seeing the players on the ice, not really wanting to leave the ice, to me that shows that they were having a good time.”
CWHL action resumes as Lacquette and the Calgary Inferno host Wong and the Shenzhen KRS Vanke Rays tomorrow at 7:45 pm MST. Next week, Nurse and the Furies return to action in China to take on Shenzhen.
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Two hockey teams of color literally took the show on the road this month to showcase their skill and their commitment to making the game more diverse.
The women of the Brown Bears and the boys from the NextGEN AAA Foundation didn’t take home any championship trophies, but they still felt like winners because their presence at two New England tournaments proved a point.
“It’s just shows that hockey is for everybody,” Brown Bears co-captain Gina Weires told me. “It shows that we can do it.”
The Brown Bears assembled for the first time at the Hockey Fights MS 2018 Vermont Tournament (Photo/Courtesy Jasmine Bazinet-Phillips).
The NextGEN AAA Foundation team that played in the 2018 Chowder Cup in suburban Boston strikes a pose (Photo/Courtesy Dee Dee Ricks).
The two friends wanted their team to be different. They wanted a roster of mostly minority women, something that they never experienced in their years of playing in the Maryland-Washington-Delaware-Virginia area.
“Seeing other hockey players of color around growing up, but very few, we felt that it was important that the ice surface is as diverse as the cities that we live in,” Bazinet-Phillips said. “Getting together the team, we hope to build a network of female hockey players of color, and then give female hockey players of color something to look forward to during the year in terms of coming to the tournament. But we also want to inspire them to go back to their local ice arenas and begin to build diversity at their rinks.”
But the first step for Bazinet-Phillips and Weires was building the Brown Bears’ inaugural roster.
Bazinet-Phillips, a Baltimore native who played NCAA Division III hockey at Maine’s Colby College, and Weires, a Washington, D.C., resident who played for and managed American University’s women’s club hockey team, reached out to the few minority players they knew and then brainstormed about where to find others.
Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney awkwardly stated that he had “binders full of women” who he could hire if he won the 2012 presidential election.
Weires and Bazinet-Phillips didn’t have binders, but they assembled a Google Doc with the names of 45 minority female hockey players who they could invite to join the Brown Bears, including some heavy hitters.
Brown Bears co-captains Jasmine Bazinet-Phillips, left, and Gina Weires racked their brains, searched the Internet, and even scoured The Color of Hockey, looking for players for their team (Photo/Courtesy Jasmine Bazinet-Phillips).
They contacted Sarah Nurse, who starred at the University of Wisconsin and won a Silver Medal playing for Canada at the 2018 Winter Olympics in South Korea.
They reached out to defenseman Blake Bolden, a National Women’s Hockey League and Canadian Women’s Hockey League champion who played last season on HC Lugano’s women’s team in Switzerland.
Nurse and Bolden couldn’t make it. But Jordan Smelker, a forward for the NWHL’s Boston Pride, and Toni Sanders, a forward who skated for NCAA Division I Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute from 2010-11 to 2013-14 did make it.
So did an 18-year-old who played high school varsity hockey and a 55-year old woman who started playing the game five years ago. In all, 12 women of varying skill put on the tie-dyed jersey with the big claw logo and played for the Brown Bears in Vermont.
The team didn’t win a game, largely because tournament organizers moved it out of the women’s division into a more competitive co-ed division because of the presence of Smelker, Sanders and other skilled players.
“We were moved to the second-highest division with predominantly males,” she said. “I think it kind of made the men’s heads spin, but I think they were also happy to have us there. There was a very positive aspect to their reaction.”
The players on the NextGEN team turned heads with their performance at New England’s Pro-Am Hockey’s 2018 Chowder Cup in suburban Boston earlier this month.
NextGEN players in action at 2018 Chowder Cup (Photo/Courtesy Dee Dee Ricks).
NextGEN – a nonprofit organization that provides mentoring, education and hockey programs to low-income and at-risk youth – fielded a team with some of the program’s elite players and sent them to the tournament through a sponsorship from Pure Hockey, the largest hockey equipment retailer in the United States.
The players came from across the U.S. and Canada and had never skated together. But once they hit the ice, it seemed like they had been playing together forever, NextGen founder Dee DeeRicks said.
Tournament coach Khalil Thomas – head coach and general manager of the Oshawa RiverKings and father of 2018 NHL second-round draft pick Akil Thomas – and Program Director Jeff Devenney ran the players through a few practices and had them ready to go.
NextGEN lost in the tourney’s quarterfinals to the NW Huskies, the team that went on to capture the Chowder Cup championship.
The diverse NextGEN team takes a break during practice at the 2018 Chowder Cup tournament (Photo/Courtesy Dee Dee Ricks).
“It doesn’t really matter about the winning, if you could have seen these kids together. I’ve never seen anything like it,” Ricks said. “Just in terms of the bonding, the jelling, the acceptance. Immediately, it was like they were life-long friends, coming together for the cause.”
Bryce Salvador, NextGEN’s NHL alumni ambassador and a former captain for the New JerseyDevils, said the mostly-minority squad was just thrilled to have the experience.
“It doesn’t happen so often when you get a team that’s as diverse like that at a high level,” said Salvador, who was the NHL’s third black team captain. “Just the ability for them just to spend time together was, in my opinion, more important than actually playing the game.”
That said, Ricks and the NextGEN brain trust showed as much competitive fire during the tournament as the team that it put on the ice.
“My son went out for three shifts in one of the last games that we were up. And one of the (opposing) kids asked him ‘Why are you playing with a bunch of black kids?'” recalled Ricks, who is white. “And John-John looked at him, and he goes, ‘Why are you losing to a bunch of black kids?'”
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Canadian women’s Olympic team hockey players Sarah Nurse and Brigette Lacquette aren’t in the Hockey Hall of Fame – but items they used at the 2018 Winter Games in PyeongChang are.
The Hall collected forward Nurse’s white Team Canada jersey and one of defenseman Lacquette’s Bauer sticks shortly after the Winter Games’ conclusion on Feb. 25. Both artifacts are now at the Hockey museum in Toronto.
“It’s an honor to have represented Canada on the Olympic stage and have a piece of my journey in the Hockey Hall of Fame,” Nurse told me recently. “I hope to inspire young girls of color to break barriers and play hockey, and never give up on whatever dreams they may have.”
The jersey that Canadian forward Sarah Nurse wore and the stick that defender Brigette Lacquette used at the 2018 Winter Olympics are in the Hockey Hall of Fame (Photo/Phil Pritchard/HHoF)
The items from the Silver Medal-winning Canadian players join the puckthat Korean unified women’s Olympic hockey team forward Randi Griffin used to score Korea’s first-ever Olympic ice hockey goal.
Sarah Nurse’s Team Canada jersey and Brigette Lacquette’s stick have a home in the Hockey Hall of Fame (Photo/Phil Pritchard/HHoF).
The presence of Nurse’s jersey and Lacquette’s stick in the Hall are significant. Nurse is believed to be the first black woman to play for Team Canada in the Winter Olympics. Lacquette is the firstFirst Nation woman to skate on a Canadian women’s Olympic squad. She is the daughter of a Cote First Nation mother and a Metis father.
Nurse, a former University of Wisconsin star and a 2016 second round draft pick of the Boston Pride of the National Women’s Hockey League, scored a goal in five games in PyeongChang.
She is the cousin of Edmonton Oilers defenseman Darnell Nurseand University ofConnecticut women’s basketball point guard and 2016 Canadian Olympic hoopster Kia Nurse.
Lacquette, a defender for the Calgary Inferno of the Canadian Women’s Hockey League and a former University of Minnesota-Duluth standout, recorded an assist in the five Winter Olympics contests and had a plus-minus rating of plus-3.
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GANGNEUNG, SOUTH KOREASarah Nurse went top shelf and her father went over the moon.
Forward Sarah Nurse scored her first Winter Olympics goal Thursday (Photo/Hockey Canada).
Nurse, a forward for the Canadian women’s hockey team, fired a wrist shot that bounced off United States goaltender Maddie Rooney’s right shoulder and found a small hole on the short side of the net. It proved to be the difference-maker in a 2-1 contest against the two best teams at the 2018 Winter Olympics.
Nurse’s goal at 14:56 of the second period gave Canada a 2-0 lead. U.S. forward KendallCoyne scored early in the third period but Canadian goaltender Genevieve Lacasse withstood an onslaught of U.S. shots – stopping 44 – to preserve the win.
“We played a full 60 minutes and I think we have some things to improve on, but we’re definitely confident in where we’re at and where we’re going,” Nurse told reporters after the game.
Nurse’s tally was her first Olympic goal. She was named to the Canadian team after she completed a collegiate career at the NCAA Division I University of Wisconsin where she tallied 76 goals and 61 assists in 150 games.
She’s the Badgers’ eighth all-time leading scorer, keeping company with the likes of U.S. stars Brianna Decker and Hilary Knight, who are also playing in PyeongChang seeking Olympic gold.
Her father was feeling somewhat anxious before Canada’s match against its arch-rival for international women’s hockey supremacy. He felt exalted when his daughter’s shot went in the net.
“I’m still trying to come down,” he told me between periods following the goal.
Michelle and Roger Nurse cheered on their daughter, Canadian women’s Olympic hockey player Sarah Nurse, at the Canada-U.S. game Thursday. Sarah Nurse scored her first Olympic goal in that contest (Photo/William Douglas/Color of Hockey).
For Roger and his wife, Michelle Nurse, watching their daughter represent Canada in Pyeongchang triggered memories of how it all began.
“We did a lot of long car rides (to tournaments), me and Sarah. At one point, we’re driving all over North America,” Roger Nurse told me. “For me and Sarah in the car, we laugh, tell a lot of jokes, trying to make the ride shorter. That’s kind of what we’ve been doing since she was 7 years old.”
Sarah reflected on her hockey journey, too. She posted a tweet prior to the Olympic hockey tournament thanking her dad for doing the things that enabled her to play the game.
Thank you for giving me every opportunity to reach me dreams. For driving all over North America & for working nonstop to put every penny into my hockey career. To the one who put me on those double blades at 3 and never let me look back.. Dad, thank you ❤️#WeAllPlayForCanadapic.twitter.com/hVxWm1NaXx
But for all her success, Sarah and her parents never fully knew where she stood with Hockey Canada. Last year was Sarah’s first centralizaton – or tryout – camp with Canada’s national team from which the Olympic squad was picked.
“There are some kids who just smooth through – they’re the best player, they go to every camp, every event, every Four Nations (tournament), every worlds tournament,” Roger Nurse told me. “For Sarah, it was kind of a fight. No matter how good you thought she was, no matter how well you thought she was doing, it was a fight.”
“And, you, know, she’s still standing, and that’s a great testament to her ability to fight through it,” he added.
Part of that resilience comes from being part of a highly-competitivefamily. Sarah’s cousins are Edmonton Oilers defenseman Darnell Nurse and University of Connecticut women’s basketball point guard Kia Nurse, who played hoops for Canada at the 2016 Olympics in Rio de Janeiro.
Sarah’s younger brothers are hockey players: Issac Nurse plays right wing for the HamiltonBulldogs of the Ontario Hockey League.Elijah Nurse is a left wing for the Dundas Blues of Canada’s Provincial Junior Hockey League.
Sarah Nurse’s brother, Isaac Nurse, plays for the Hamilton Bulldogs of the OHL (Photo/Aaron Bell/OHL Images).
Her father was a renowned Canadian lacrosse player. Her uncle Richard Nurse – Darnell and Kia’s father – was a wide receiver for the Hamilton Tiger-Cats of the CanadianFootball League. Former National Football League quarterback Donovan McNabb is an uncle.
Sarah Nurse told CBC Sports that she’s proud of her family’s athletic roots stressed that “I’m here to create my own path.”
It’s something that Roger Nurse’s children occasionally have to remind him of when he’s dispensing hockey advice.
“I’d say something to her about a game she’d play at Wisconsin, she’d look at me and say ‘Dad, you never played a game of NCAA hockey,'” Roger Nurse said. “And Issac would say to me ‘Dad, you never played one game in the Ontario Hockey League.’ Point taken.”
These days, Roger Nurse keeps his advice simple.
“‘Go have fun, step up, and do what you have to do,'” he tells them.
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The former University of Wisconsin forward was named to the Canadian women’s hockey team that will compete at the 2018 Winter Olympics in PyeongChang, South Korea in February.
Forward Sarah Nurse is headed to the 2018 WinterOlympics (Photo/Hockey Canada).
Nurse, the cousin of Edmonton Oilers defenseman Darnell Nurseand University ofConnecticut basketball point guard Kia Nurseand niece of former National FootballLeague quarterback Donovan McNabb, tallied 76 goals and 61 assists in 150 games for the Badgers from 2013-14 to 2016-17.
She was the Badgers’ second-leading scorer in her senior year with 25 goals and 28 assists in 39 games.
Nurse led NCAA Division I women’s hockey players with three hat tricks last season, including the first three-goal game by a Badgers player against the University ofMinnesota last December. Nurse is the 22nd Wisconsin hockey player in program history to reach 100 career points.
The 5-foot-8 Hamilton, Ontario, Canada, native brings a wealth of international experience to Team Canada. She was a member of the country’s gold medal-winning team at the 2013 International Ice Hockey Federation Women’s Under-18 Championship in Helsinki, Finland, in 2013.
She also helped Canada capture gold at the 2015 Nation’s Cup in Germany and silver at the 2017 Four Nations Cup in Tampa, Florida. She has 3 goals and 1 assists in 11 international games.
The Olympics are becoming a Nurse family tradition. Cousin Kia represented Canada on its women’s basketball team at the 2016 Olympics in Rio de Janeiro.
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The sophomore from Whitby, Ontario, Canada, McGilldidn’t register a point in Sunday’s championship game, but she was a key contributor to Clarkson reaching the Frozen Four final, scoring the game-winning goal in the Golden Knights’ 4-3 semifinal victory over the University of Minnesota on Friday.
McGill was the Golden Knights sixth-leading scorer in the 2016-17 season with 9 goals and 22 assists in 41 games. In her 2015-16 freshman campaign, she was Clarkson’s seventh-leading scorer with 14 goals and 11 assists in 40 games and was tied for third among ECACrookies with 25 points.
Clarkson’s Rhyen McGill in action against the University of Wisconsin Badgers in NCAA Women’s Frozen Four championship game (Photo/Clarkson University).
Clarkson, a school in Potsdam, New York, finished the 2016-17 regular season with a 32-4-5 overall record and a 19-1-2 record within the ECAC.
University of Wisconsin forward Sarah Nurse.
Sunday’s championship game was the last collegiate contest for Wisconsin forward Sarah Nurse, cousin of Edmonton Oilers defenseman Darnell Nurseand University of Connecticut basketball point guard Kia Nurse.
She was the second-leading Badgers scorer during the regular season with 25 goals and 28 assists in 39 games. She’ll leave Wisconsin as the school’s eighth all-time goal scorer among women with 74.
Professional hockey and a spot on Canada’s 2018 Winter Olympics women’s team could be in Nurse’s future. She was chosen by the Boston Pride with the eighth overall pick in the 2016 National Women’s Hockey LeagueDraft. And she has been a mainstay for Hockey Canada in international tournaments.
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While hockey fans anxiously await next month’s World Cup of Hockeyand the start of the 2016-17 National Hockey League season in October, there’s quality hockey underway in Calgary where women’s teams from the United States and Canada are resuming one of the fiercest rivalries in sports.
U of Wisconsin forward Sarah Nurse is one of Team Canada’s captains (Photo/Hockey Canada).
There’s little friendly in the friendlies that the U.S. and Canadian Under-22 and Under-18 teams will play in the series, which started Wednesday night.
The series has all the ingredients, including talented players of color and, of course, a Nurse.
Forward Sarah Nurse is one of the captains for Canada’s U-22 squad. The Hamilton, Ont., native led the University of Wisconsin women’s team in scoring last season with 25 goals and 13 assists in 36 games.
BostonUniversity’sVictoria Bachopened the scoring with a goal at 8:03 in the second. Harvard University Forward Sydney Daniels scored for the U.S. at 02:41 of the third period.
Canada’s U-22 team goes up against its U.S. counterpart in Calgary. Sarah Nurse, fourth from the right. Katilin Tse, second row, seventh from the left.
Joining Nurse on Canada’s U-22 squad is Harvard defenseman Kaitlin
Harvard University defenseman Kaitlin Tse (Photo/Hockey Canada).
Tse,who registered an assist on Bach’s goal Wednesday night. Tse played 32 games in 2015-16 as a freshman for the Crimson, tallying a goal and 10 assists.
She was a member of Canada’s Silver Medal-winning team at the 2015 IIHF Under-18 World Championship and the 2014 Canadian squad that defeated the U.S. in a three-game series in 2014
Like Nurse, she comes from an athletic family. Her older brother, Matthew Tse, plays for Hong Kong’s national lacrosse team.
USA Hockey National Women’s U-22 team. Kelsey Koelzer. second row, fifth from the right. (Photo/Nancie Battaglia).
Nurse and Tse will face Team USA’sKelsey Koelzer, a defenseman from Princeton University. The junior from Horsham, Pa., notched 17 goals and 16 assists in 33 games for the Tigers last season and finished second on the team with 8 game-winning goals.
Her game balances with offense and defense: she took 122 shots and blocked 61 pucks last season. The New York Riveters chose Koelzer in the first round of the 2016 NationalWomen’s Hockey LeagueDraft last month.
on its U-18 squad. She’s a blue-liner for the Toronto Jr. Aeros of the Provincial Women’s Hockey League.
Mitchell tallied 3 goals and 11 assists in 34 games for the Aeros last season. She collected a Bronze Medal playing for Ontario Blue at the 2015 National Women’s Under-18 Championship in Huntsville, Ont.
Canada’s 2016 Under-18 women’s team faces the United States in a three-game series in Calgary. Defenseman Avery Mitchell is the fifth person from the left, back row.
Another championship game, another championship for the Nurse family.
Defenseman Darnell Nurse, the Edmonton Oilers’ 2013 first-round draft pick, powered Team Canada to a 5-4 victory over Russia to win the Gold Medal at the International Ice Hockey Federation World Junior Championship in January.
UConn guard Kia Nurse adds to the family championship trophy case.
Wednesday night, guard Kia Nurse, Darnell’s younger sister, scored nine points to help the University of ConnecticutHuskies capture their third consecutive NCAA Division I women’s basketball championship, the school’s 10th overall. The Huskies defeated Notre Dame 63-53 in Tampa, Fla.
“It’s the pinnacle of women’s basketball,” proud papa Richard Nurse told the hometown Hamilton Spectator before the game. “Outside of the Olympics there isn’t a bigger stage for women’s basketball than the NCAA championship.”
The Nurses are a close-knit, athletic family
Team Canada’s Darnell Nurse.
-and highly competitive. Father RichardNurse was a wide receiver for the Canadian Football League’s Hamilton Tiger-Cats; his wife, Cathy, was a stellar basketball player for Canada’s McMasterUniversity.
Their older daughter, Tamika, played basketball at the University of Oregon and Bowling Green State University. Richard Nurse’s brother, Roger, was a standout lacrosse player in Canada. Their sister, Raquel, was a Syracuse University hoops standout and is married to former Philadelphia Eagles quarterback Donovan McNabb.
Kia and Darnell’s cousin, Sarah Nurse, plays hockey for the University of
Wisconsin. Her younger brother, Elijah Nurse, was drafted by the Ontario HockeyLeague’s Sault Ste. Marie Greyhounds, the Canadian major junior team Darnell plays for.
Kia Nurse gravitated to the hardwood rather than the hard ice. Still, her father says that she has a hockey player’s mentality on the court.
“Besides being extremely skilled, she’s a nasty piece of business,” he once told me. “She’s very physical.”
Big brother Darnell wasn’t able to attend Kia’s game on Tuesday night. His Greyhounds were preparing to play the Guelph Storm in the second round of the Ontario Hockey League playoffs.
But most of the family – including McNabb – was in Tampa to cheer and celebrate. And the Nurses becoming a two-sport, two-championship household wasn’t lost on the hockey world.
Nurse, a 2013 Edmonton Oilers first-round draft pick, was named Canada’s player of the game in Monday night’s 5-4 victory over Russia in the tournament’s Gold Medal game in Toronto.
Defenseman Darnell Nurse has a monster IIHF tournament for Canada (Matthew Murnaghan/Hockey Canada Images).
In addition, he was named one of Canada’s best three players in the tournament along with Max Domi, a forward for the London Knights of the Ontario Hockey League and a 2013 Arizona Coyotes first-round draft pick, and Sam Reinhart, a forward for the Western Hockey League’sKootenay Ice and a 2014 Buffalo Sabres first-rounder.
Monday’s win ended a five-year gold medal drought for Canada at the tourney for players under 20 years old, and the 19-year-old Nurse was a key component in the team winning the gold without a loss.
Monday night represented Mission Accomplished for Nurse. The nephew of retired Philadelphia Eagles quarterback Donovan McNabb vowed to make Team Canada after not being named to the 2014 squad, a move that even stunned “Hockey Night in Canada” commentator Don Cherry.
Nurse is captain of the OHL’s Sault Ste. Marie Greyhounds.
The 2014 Canadian team finished fourth at the tournament played in Malmo, Sweden, and failed to medal.
“That is an absolute joke not to have Darnell Nurse out there,” the bombastic Cherry
Nurse appeared in two games for Edmonton in 2014-15.
said last year.
As for Nurse, he took the snub and being cut in training camp by Edmonton in 2013 hard. He used those experiences and being sent back to Sault Ste. Marie after playing two games for the Oilers this season as fuel to make Team Canada this year.
“Not being (in Edmonton) opens up opportunities like this, which I have been looking
forward to all year,” he told reporters at Team Canada’s training camp last month. “I am going to develop playing junior and hope to play in this tournament.”
And play he did. Nurse had one goal, no assists, and a plus-minus of +8 in seven games. He also got off 10 shots, several of them missiles fired while rushing the puck up ice. Opponents didn’t score while he was on the ice.
Apparently, there’s something about playing Russia that brings the best out of the Nurse family. Sarah Nurse, Darnell’s cousin and a forward for the University of Wisconsin women’s hockey team, scored a goal for Canada’s National Women’sDevelopment Team in a 5-1 win against Russia Sunday at the 2015 Nation’s Cup tournament in Germany.
