LIVING PROOF
F itriya Mohamed can still see the scene playing out in her mind, a year-and-a-half later. It was early July 2022. Sunlight filtered through the clouds hanging above North York, Ont.’s TARIC Islamic Centre. And within its walls, in the Centre’s gymnasium, there was a basketball game.
She can still see the jerseys — one team in black, the other in white — swooping across the court and darting around each other, a monochromatic whirlwind of joy. She remembers the faces, too, all those who lined the gym walls, who gathered to witness the moment — the day her vision came to life.
Over the heart of each player in attendance was a hint at the weight of the occasion, Mohamed’s journey encapsulated in the insignia stitched there — blue and orange behind the silhouette of a hijabi hooper, along with five letters: ‘MWSBL.’
“It was honestly such a beautiful day,” Mohamed says now, thinking back to the Muslim Women’s Summer Basketball League’s first official tipoff on that North York court. “I just remember the experience, the energy, the vibe, everyone just being happy to be there. We had people come watch the game. It was just a beautiful, beautiful experience. The MWSBL Season 1 launch, it was a celebration of Muslim women in the basketball space finally being seen, you know? Of that space finally happening for them.”
Mohamed had launched the non-profit two years earlier with the hope of creating something she’d longed for during her own days on the court. Then came the pandemic, endless delays, and a test of patience, before the MWSBL could finally take to the floor.
“I was emotional, for sure,” she says. “I was happy, because, you know — finally, it was here. And it was for them. There’s just so much stress and so much behind-the-scenes that people don’t see. On that first day, because that’s the thing that we’d been working towards, when everyone was finally enjoying the hard work that was put into it, it was an experience.”
To fully understand the meaning of that game, though, you have to rewind further. Back before her league became a staple of Toronto’s grassroots sports community, before she herself became a staple of the city’s hoops scene — earning collaborations with Nike, the Toronto Raptors, Canada Basketball, and Masai Ujiri’s Giants of Africa — Mohamed was just a kid who fell in love with the game. After coming to Canada and embarking on a journey in the sport marked both by incredible support and immovable systemic barriers, she dedicated herself to creating the type of opportunities, the types of spaces, she’d longed for and never found.
Now, with the MWSBL flourishing, she’s seeing the promise of her vision validated. Just as she did, for the first time, that July afternoon.
“Honestly, I can’t express it,” she says of the day MWSBL came to life. “It’s one of those things — you had to be there to feel it.”
M ohamed was 10 years old when her family made the journey from Oromia, Ethiopia, to find a new home in Canada. It was in elementary school, as she adjusted to that new home, that her love of sport first began to bloom.
“In Ethiopia, it’s more soccer and running — we’re known for running. When I came to Canada, that was when I really discovered that other sports even existed,” she says. “For the first time, I was introduced to all sorts of sports. Like volleyball, badminton — and basketball, of course.”
It was that last one that had a young Mohamed rapt from the jump.
“I just remember dribbling,” she says. “Just dribbling the ball, hearing the sound. The faster you dribble, the more power. That was one thing, like, ‘Oh, this is cool.’ And then the first few shots that you make, you’re like ‘Oh, wow’ — the twos, the three-pointers, the nice layups that you make.
“You’re like, ‘I could actually possibly be good at this,’ you know? … That’s when my passion and my love for this sport started to grow.”
Aside from granting her a chance to experience the game’s tactile glory, Mohamed’s early love for the sport also created a bridge between her and all the new faces around her, as she navigated the potentially overwhelming adjustment that comes with moving half a world away.
“Sports honestly made it an easy transition for me,” she says. “Because I felt like I had to prove myself from a skill and a hard-work standpoint, rather than with the English word. … I didn’t know the language too well. New to the country, new culture. But sport just became a way for me to embrace who I am. And also to learn this new culture, this Canadian culture, and meet people that were also passionate about the sport — it became a way for us to bond.”
While Mohamed loved hoops, she dabbled in everything as on offer, from badminton to ultimate frisbee. And every step of the way, her new classmates, coaches, and teachers spurred her on.
“They supported me, they understood where I was coming from,” she says. “I feel like [being in] Toronto also just made it easy. I hear about these experiences from women that look like me from outside of the GTA, and the experiences are not similar to mine at all — they’ve experienced so many challenges, being a Muslim woman, a hijabi Muslim woman.
“So, I always give a big shout out to the beautiful diversity of the city of Toronto. I feel like people celebrated me. They saw my athleticism and allowed me to experience these new experiences with different sports.”
It was in high school, when Mohamed earned a spot on her school’s girls’ basketball team, that her approach to athletics became more determined.
“When I went to high school, I decided to focus on basketball, learn the sport, and I just discovered the love that I had for the sport,” she says. “I was involved with anything that had to do with basketball. I just loved all aspects of the sport, to be honest — the culture of it, the community that I was able to create outside of the school.”
More than anything else, it was that sense of community that pulled Mohamed in then — and drives her forward still. “The sisterhood, I feel like that was such a big part of it,” she says. “We had our season from September to December, and then afterwards, we still had that relationship beyond the season. … And we were close with the other basketball teams as well. The boys had their senior team, and the basketball team as a whole — both men and women — we became a big community. It was cool, because we respected each other. We went to each other’s games, we cheered each other on.
“Basketball, the community, was bigger than just us being on a team. … That community was very powerful, and encouraging. At that time, I was the only Muslim woman on the team, but the bond that I had with the other women of colour, it was like we had each other’s back, no matter what. … You could just be yourself, you didn’t have to change yourself to be part of basketball culture. And I think for me, being an outsider, being someone that had just recently immigrated to the country, that wasn’t seeing other Muslim women playing basketball, they made it easy for me to be accepted without me having to change who I am.”
By the time her high-school career wound to a close, Mohamed had managed to make as much of a lasting impact on her school’s athletic community as it had on her. As a senior, she was named the school’s female Athlete of the Year, becoming the first Muslim woman in the institution’s history to claim the honour.
“Winning that award was such an emotional moment and experience for me,” she remembers. “There are pictures of all the seniors, both male and female, that won the award — their pictures are on display beside the gym, so you know who’s who. Winning that award, knowing that I’m the first Muslim woman for my high school to win it, it was such an honour. Just knowing that these teachers and coaches nominated me for this award, that meant they saw my growth from Day 1, you know? … It made me believe in myself in ways that I didn’t think I could.
“And going forward, I made a commitment to myself that this award was not going to be just me winning it, and then calling it a day. I made an agreement with myself, that it had to be bigger than just a picture of me on the wall at this high school.”
T hough much of Mohamed’s early journey in the sports world had been filled with teammates and coaches who celebrated her, who immortalized her success on their high-school walls, there were still questions that floated in the back of her mind, barriers she found it hard to ignore.
“I didn’t see other Muslim women playing basketball,” she says. “Honestly, at that time, I had never heard of any Muslim women’s programming whatsoever. I know I would have been excited, and I did my research at that time and I couldn’t find anything that focused on Muslim women specifically.”
Looking back, she understands now how much it would’ve meant to see more hoopers who looked like her out on the court or on TV.
“Having that community of support would have been so, so great, because I felt like I was the one that was always defending myself — you know, ‘Why is this Muslim woman playing sports when it’s not something that you see in our community?’” she says. “I come from an East African household — my mom didn’t really believe in the aspect of women playing sport. … She was able to support and understand that I had passion for this thing called basketball, but she never really understood how much I loved the sport.”
When Mohamed moved on to a sports management program at Brock University in St. Catharines, that absence of community contributed to her hanging up her hoop dreams, as her family urged her to focus on her studies rather than try to continue playing.
Still, Mohamed remembered the promise she’d made to herself to ensure she passed something down to the ones who would come after her. So, as she moved into that next chapter, she began planning her next steps.
“It was just me reflecting on some of the things I would have wanted and appreciated. Because I knew I wanted to go further, but I wasn’t able to,” she says. “I was reflecting on, ‘What is something I could do to ensure that the next generation of individuals that look like me don’t have to experience that barrier?’ [To make sure] they have that support, they have that community, they have the resources that they would need to play the sport that they love at the highest level possible.
“[I asked myself], ‘Why was I the only person in this space, when I was playing the sport?’”
Over her final years at Brock, she worked with local non-profit Hijabi Ballers, a GTA organization that provides Muslim women opportunities to participate in a number of different sports, as a coach and an ambassador for their basketball programming. And as her degree wrapped up, her vision began to crystallize.
It happened out on the floor with Hijabi Ballers founder Amreen Kadwa as Mohamed coached a drop-in basketball session for the organization. It was there, seeing the interest on the faces of all those who showed up to the sessions — their eyes lit up just like Mohamed’s had been when she first fell in love with the sport — that she realized she could do more.
“I knew [given] the amount of girls and women that were passionate about the sport, that it wasn’t just something random coming in — it was something that the community needed,” she says.
She thought back to those questions she’d asked herself years earlier to figure out what it was, precisely, that was needed. Kadwa offered a vote of confidence and her organization’s support, and the plan began to take form.
Mohamed learned that some of the girls in her community didn’t feel comfortable playing in a co-ed setting, and that their parents felt the same — the new league, then, would focus on women-only spaces. But it would have opportunities to showcase the league to the wider community too, an all-star game for those who were comfortable playing in front of the public. She remembered the financial difficulties her own family encountered when it came to paying to play on a rec team. So, the costs would be kept down, a $55 registration fee for eight weeks of games, and financial assistance for those who needed it.
As more supporters came on board, the fledgeling league found ways to provide gear to participants, too — “a sports hijab, or sports bras, anything that may be a barrier for the girls and women in our community, to ensure that they’re comfortably playing the sport,” she says.
A final moment of hesitation came at the end of the planning process, as Mohamed mulled whether to push ahead with her plan or bide her time until after she completed her Masters degree at Brock, which she’d just begun.
“A grant opportunity came up with the city of Toronto, and I told myself, ‘If this grant is successful, it’s meant to be, and I’m going to go with it. If it’s not successful, I’m going to wait,’” she remembers. “At the end of 2019, on December 31st, they sent the email saying that we got accepted, and the grant was successful.”
The stars seemed to have aligned, and the Muslim Women’s Summer Basketball League was born.
“It was a $3,000 grant. It wasn’t a lot, but it was an opportunity for us to test it, to see if this was a need for the community, if it was going to be as big as I thought it was going to be.”
Halfway through the league’s first year, though, the sports world ground to a halt due to the pandemic, putting Mohamed’s dream on ice just as it was picking up steam.
T wo-and-a-half long years later, the MWSBL officially took to the floor on that July afternoon in North York. In the 18 months since, the league’s continued to gain momentum, attracting more hoopers, more partners, and more attention from the biggest basketball organizations in the city.
“The first season, we had it in the West End [of Toronto], and we had over 90 participants register. The second season, last summer, we had it at the Waterfront Neighborhood Centre — we felt like we tapped into a whole new community,” Mohamed says. “We thought we were just going to bring the West End girls to the Downtown area, but it was a whole new [interested] community. So, that let us know that this league is needed in different parts of the city. … It’s something that I never really [predicted] — I knew it was a need, but I never really expected it to be at the scale that we’re at.”
The league got a clear sign of that growth on the heels of its most recent season, collaborating with Kadwa’s Hijabi Ballers on the first iteration of what is to be an annual tournament.
“Me and Amreen, the founder of Hijabi Ballers, share a sisterhood — the organic sisterhood of us being passionate about women’s sport and wanting to grow Muslim women’s [opportunities] in sport communities in Toronto,” Mohamed says. “It was such an organic collaboration that we did together. We had over 120 participants register. It was like the power of both of our organizations combining to unite. That was just the tournament component — as a whole, we welcomed over 300 participants, [including] the workshops and the volunteers.
“That was a full-circle moment for me, because Hijabi Ballers was started in 2018, and they’ve been doing a lot of the groundwork as well, for Muslim women in [Toronto’s] sports community. Partnering with them was just beautiful.”
The most telling sign of momentum, though, came just last month, when Giants of Africa — the far-reaching youth empowerment organization co-founded by Raptors president Masai Ujiri — partnered with the MWSBL on an all-girls basketball clinic that featured guest coaches like WNBA star Kia Nurse and former European pro Geraldine Robert.
For Mohamed, whose love of the game was originally nurtured in the stands watching the team Ujiri now helms, it was undeniable validation of her vision.
“That’s Masai’s organization, you know? Them trusting in us, to partner with us to do a clinic, that’s a big deal,” Mohamed says. “I’m so grateful, and just honoured to be in these types of conversations, to be known by individuals who are doing such amazing work in the community as well. The growth has been amazing.”
“The opportunity wasn’t always there,” said MWSBL coach Melissa McLetchie at the time. “So, for us to be able to come into spaces like this, where we can be ourselves, show up as our whole selves, is an amazing opportunity.”
While progress has come swiftly, there has also been a fair share of tumult. The pandemic accounted for plenty of that. But even after things got up and running, the persistent challenge of finding a space to operate out of has accounted for much of the rest.
“Finding space is honestly one of the most challenging aspects of running this organization,” Mohamed says, noting the added difficulty stemming from their need for a fully women-only facility. “The ultimate goal is to try to see if we could work towards a facility that is catered to women. That would be a beautiful thing, because then we wouldn’t have to worry about trying to find a space to run our programs. Just imagine the amount of programming, and the amount of impact, we could have if we had a facility where we didn’t have to worry about availability. … That’s my next goal.”
For now, they’re continuing to make do with hopping around the city. Mohamed credits Show Obiorah, the league’s director of finance and treasurer, and Victoria Guerrero, the league’s director of marketing and communications, as essential pieces of the organization, without whom such growth wouldn’t have come. And while there have been more moments of chaos than the trio might’ve expected when Mohamed first launched MWSBL, they’re relishing the progress they’ve found so far.
“This is non-profit,” Mohamed says. “We’re all just here for the passion of the sport, development of the community, and just growing the women’s game in Toronto.”
As for how the hoops world has shaped her own journey since she touched down in the city as a 10-year-old, never having held a basketball in her life, Mohamed can’t help but feel she’s precisely where she’s meant to be. Even in her high-school days, it seems her path was already directed towards this moment.
“I remember, when I was in high school, I had this journal where I used to write some of the things I would like to do in the future. And one of the things I wrote was literally, ‘Start a basketball league for women,’” Mohamed says. “Years later I’m going through this journal and I see this, and it’s just like, ‘Wow,’ you know? … That’s something that I wrote down, because of the lack of basketball opportunities for women that existed in Toronto when I was trying to pursue this sport, when I was trying to be involved in this sport more than I was.
“At the moment, I’m happy for the direction that we’re heading.”
Mohamed’s own journey, from Ethiopia to Canada to somewhere near the centre of this country’s basketball universe, is woven into that new direction. And as she’d hoped, it’s a path sure to inspire the next generation of young hijabi hoopers — those who might hear her story and imagine they could one day make their name in the sports world, who might see that logo emblazoned on those MWSBL jerseys and believe they can ball too.
Mohamed doesn’t take this aspect of her role lightly.
“You know, when I was playing basketball, I didn’t see visibly Muslim women that I could rely on for representation, for empowerment, for motivation,” she says. “I’m grateful for the position that I’m in, for the trust the community has in me. … I’m happy to be the representation that I needed, for the next generation of Muslim girls.
“I hope I continue to make them proud.”