TORONTO — You can never take the Olympics for granted.
There is no one on the Canadian women’s basketball team that ever would, not record-setting four-time Olympian Natalie Achonwa, or 18-year-old Syla Swords, who will be the youngest Canadian Olympic basketball player ever, keeping busy between finishing high school and starting her freshman year at the University of Michigan this coming fall.
Individually all of the 12 women announced by the Canadian Olympic Committee in downtown Toronto Tuesday have had moments when making it to the pinnacle of their sport seemed unlikely, distant or at least very, very, difficult to achieve.
Injuries, self-doubt, competition — the facts of an athletic life.
But this edition of the women’s national team knows more than perhaps any other version how fine the line is between success and failure, triumph and heartbreak.
Collectively their Olympic dream nearly died a premature death. With a chance to punch their ticket to France at a qualifying tournament in Hungary in February, Canada fell short, losing to Japan when they would have advanced with a win. They still had a chance to move on as long as favoured Spain won against host Hungary, however, so there was hope.
But by halftime of the Spain-Hungary contest, hope was on the way out of town. Hungary, a 16th-ranked upstart with a chance to qualify in front of their home crowd, was up by 19 points on fourth-ranked Spain, who had nothing to gain with a win, having already earned a spot in the field for France.
The Canadians had left the arena and were at their hotel, their fate completely out of their hands.
“I couldn’t even watch the game,” said Shay Colley, the veteran guard from Brampton who was named to the Olympic team for a second time on Tuesday. “I was texting Kayla [Alexander] to find out what was going on, and when Hungary went up by 20 or whatever, I’m packing up my things and I’m like, ‘now what am I going to do with my life? What am I going to do this summer? The plan was to go to the Olympics. I was in tears, crying, on the phone with my mom, because like, this is it, you know? You think back to all the time we put in, all the training together and working so hard the past three years, and it’s just like, we fell short.”
But the game wasn’t over. Hungary went up by 22 early in the third quarter, but from that point on Spain began to cut into the lead bit-by-bit, trimming the deficit to 14 by the end of the third.
“The game went on and Kayla’s texting me and she’s like, ‘Shay, watch it, and I’m like, no Kayla, I can’t.’ And she was like, ‘Shay, something is happening.’ So I went into her room and we’re sitting there watching together and Spain came back. They won by one point, and we’re like crying, hugging each other, screaming in the hallways filled with joy.
“So you go from like, sad, defeated to not knowing what you’re going to do to so excited. Just a whole world of emotions in the span of what, an hour-and-a-half?”
Knowing how close it came to not happening, the women — ranked fifth in the world and the first Canadian basketball team to qualify for four consecutive Olympic tournaments — are cherishing the opportunity in front of them.
They’re all coming to France from different places.
Alexander, the veteran centre, is looking forward to her second Olympic experience, but her first with all the fanfare that comes with it as the 2020 Tokyo Games were first postponed and then played in 2021 under the restrictions of the pandemic. Alexander had missed previous opportunities due to roster limitations and injuries. She’s in peak form, having just signed to play for Spanish power Valencia, but can’t take being named to the team for granted given all it took to get this far.
“It’s the same level of excitement for sure,” says Alexander, 33. “It feels different because the last one was [during] COVID, so I didn’t have the full experience, so looking forward to having that this time around. But It’s always a privilege to be able to represent your country and that never changes… we all go through our journeys and have our ups and our downs, but it makes you appreciate the moments like today when you get on the other side of those adversities and trials and finally live out all your dream and see it come true, it makes it all worth it in the end.”
With a brief break between their training camp — which included some exhibition games against Portugal in Victoria — and leaving for Europe next week, only four Olympians were on hand in Toronto for the official announcement and the presentation of their Team Canada uniforms at the COC offices. But they all had a story.
Sammi Hill will be playing at the Olympics for the first time, but it won’t be her first time at the Olympics. The six-year national team veteran was in Tokyo in 2021 as an alternate, practising and training in case someone got sick or injured and couldn’t play. Fortunately no one did, but that meant that as the Games were starting, she found herself flying back to Toronto, her own Olympic dream delayed.
“Yeah, definitely happy to be in the position I am now than I was in Japan,” said Hill, who starred at Virginia Tech as a collegian before her professional career in Europe. “But I’m really grateful for the experience and it helped me grow a lot as a person and a player. Being that close to my dream and being named alternate. It was tough, but was still my team, my teammates, my coaches and was proud to be there with them and tough to go home when they started the games, but I was cheering them from here and this year I’ll be with them in Paris.”
Getting to France — preliminary play takes place in Lille, France, before shifting to Paris for the elimination and medal rounds — is just part of the job. In three consecutive trips to the Olympics, Canada has yet to get past the quarterfinals. With a fourth-place finish at the FIBA Basketball World Cup in 2022 on their resume, the goal is to finally crack the podium and bring back the first basketball medal for Canada — men or women — since 1936.
Taking on the task is a fast, athletic and skilled group with a wide range of experience. Of the 12 named to the team Tuesday, four are active in the WNBA – Laeticia Amihere, Bridget Carleton, Aaliyah Edwards and Kia Nurse, while Achonwa has nine WNBA seasons to her name and Alexander eight.
All of them have previous Olympic experience, as does Colley and Nirra Fields, who will be appearing in her third Games. Meanwhile, four of the 12 — Hill, Swords and college stars Yvonne Ejim of Calgary and Cassandra Prosper of Montreal — will be making their Olympic debut. Shawn Swords, Syla’s father, was on the men’s Olympic team in 2000.
The message from the veterans is simple:
“Every Olympics is different,” said Fields, who made her Olympic debut in 2016 in Rio de Janeiro. “I would go in with the mindset to be present. There are a lot of things that happen that we plan on going in, but don’t go as expected. So to be ready for that and to have a great response to that. So honestly, just take everything in and enjoy the moment.”
They’re all going to be there, living out an Olympic dream that was almost denied before it started and valuing the opportunity all the more.