How the WNBA is helping Canadian Achonwa balance motherhood and her career

TORONTO — Out for the season is typically the last thing you want to hear about a professional athlete. It implies something close to a tragedy, an interruption that inspires doubt and provides an unwanted glimpse into athletic mortality.

Or it can be the best thing ever. Take Natalie Achonwa, for example. 

The Canadian senior women’s team star and Minnesota Lynx forward hasn’t been ruled out for the entire 2023 WNBA season, but it’s possible – maybe even likely – that she’ll sit the year out.

There couldn’t be a better reason, however.

The eight-year veteran became a mother for the first time last month, giving birth to a son named Maverick.

“Everyone is happy, health and just trying to get in the flow of things,” said Achonwa.

The timing means that the former Notre Dame star from Guelph, Ont., won’t be able to take part in Canadian basketball history — at least on the court — as the Lynx and the Chicago Sky take over Scotiabank Arena in the first WNBA game ever played in Canada.

“I’ll just be there as a fan,” she told me in a recent phone interview.

She’ll have plenty of company. The game sold out in minutes, suggesting the appetite for women’s basketball and the WNBA brand in particular is exceptionally strong in Canada, even though Achonwa is one of just three Canadians currently in the league — her Lynx teammate Bridget Carleton and Kia Nurse of the Seattle Storm being the others.

As much as Achonwa wishes she could be playing on the Raptors' home floor and soaking in the experience of playing in front of 19,800 fans just an hour's drive from her hometown, it’s not hard for her to put herself in the sneakers of the countless girls who will be on hand, thrilled at the chance to see the best female basketball players in the world in Canada for the first time.

“I'm just thinking of how excited my 15-year-old self would be,” said Achonwa, who was spending Friday doing some public appearances around the city and otherwise providing dinner recommendations to her teammates. “The young girls, and young boys also, who are going to be able to come to the game and see the best: the WNBA; the best league, the best athletes at this level compete, in Canada. I think it’s huge for that next generation to see what the highest level looks like.”

For the moment, Achonwa is appreciating the opportunity to focus on her own next generation. She’s hopeful she’ll be able to play towards the end of the 36-game schedule, which stretches through September. Her next goal after that is helping Canada earn a spot in the field for the 2024 Olympics in Paris, which would be her fourth-straight Olympics and a record for a Canadian women's basketball player.

But she feels fortunate she doesn’t have to rush back to the floor.

As a long-time player rep and a current member of the WNBA Players Association, Achonwa has been at the forefront of labour negotiations that have improved the protections and benefits for players who become moms while under contract.

Achonwa wasn’t a mother when the current CBA was ratified in 2020, but she as a player rep followed the negotiations closely and was responsible for communicating issues to her teammates. She had long hoped to be able to have a child while still playing at the highest levels and she’s appreciating some of the elements that were added now that the time has arrived.

Foremost among them is she is getting the entirety of her 2023 salary, where previously maternity benefits were capped at 50 per cent. As well, she’s entitled to a two-bedroom apartment, rather than a stipend for a one-bedroom unit. There is also a childcare stipend for moms who have returned to the floor and need someone to watch their baby while at work. The CBA also has family planning benefits for players such as a fund for In Vitro Fertilization treatments and embryo cryopreservation. 

“These were huge, momentous, things during the previous CBA negotiations in 2020,” said Achonwa. “Previously if you were out on maternity leave you’d get fifty per cent of your base salary and that was one of the rights we were fighting for in our previous CBA and now, being on the other side benefitting from. I will receive my full salary this year whether I’m able to make it back or not — so pending clearance from doctors and trainers and stuff like that to see if I will make it back by the end of the year — but knowing that my family will be taken care of financially while I’m out on maternity leave was huge.”

Achonwa doesn’t take time away from her sport lightly. He professional career faced challenges early on as she missed her entire first season after tearing her ACL in the final moments of an Elite Eight win for Notre Dame at the NCAA tournament in 2014. She played with a brace on her right knee at the 2020 Olympics, suiting up just four weeks after straining her MCL in a WNBA game.

But Achonwa was dealing with a different health concern at the 2022 FIBA Women’s World Cup in Australia last October when she helped Canada to a best-ever fourth-place finish while in the early stages of her pregnancy. Her decision to play was supported by her doctors, but it was still a new challenge for the three-time Olympian.

“I didn’t know if it was because we played eight games in 10 days or if it was because I was growing a baby,” she said of the fatigue she had to fight through. “But in sport, there’s aches and pains and injuries — you’re always going through something, so I kind of put in the same category in the back of my mind and just tried to fight through it because we were there for a reason, and I wanted to help my team any way that I could.”

So it's no small thing for Achonwa to miss Saturday’s game, which some view as a dry run to test the Canadian market for possible WNBA expansion. For Carleton — who has played the last two of her four WNBA seasons alongside Achonwa, not to mention their time together on the national team — it will be a little disorientating not having her friend with her on the bench, floor, and locker room.

“I texted her when I left for Spain [where Carleton played this past winter] and I was like, 'I don’t know what it’s like not playing with you,” said Carleton, who will be the lone Canadian in action Saturday. "But she’s greatly missed, obviously, not just on the floor but her leadership and who she is as a person. But we’re all super-excited about her next step in life. She’s always wanted to be a mom and so I’m really happy for her."

Carleton’s also come to appreciate the way the WNBA’s maternity benefits have supported Achonwa’s next step in her life journey.

“It’s as it should be, in a women’s professional sport,” said Carleton. “It just gives you the option. There’s obviously a time frame when women can have babies and it usually overlaps with when you’re playing, so being able to do both shouldn’t even be a question. You shouldn’t have to choose between having a family and furthering your career, so I’m glad she’s living both of her dreams at once.”

The only downside is Achonwa’s dream of playing a WNBA game in her home country will have to wait. But some sacrifices are well worth it.