Kia Nurse is dead set on global domination - Sportsnet.ca
If this was already posted sorry. I just didn't see it.
"Nurse seems so at home you’d never guess the 22-year-old from Hamilton, Ont., is in the midst of her rookie season."
"And while she’ll be the first to admit she’s still finding her footing among the biggest and best in the WNBA, that didn’t stop Nurse from becoming an immediate fan favourite, or from setting a couple franchise records."
"... her sister, Tamika ... suggested, just before Nurse was born, “Let’s name the baby ‘Ikea’”
"Her family was travelling in the U.S. and she saw Maya Moore starring on ESPN for the University of Connecticut. “That’s when I thought maybe I could do this,’” she says. “Maybe.”
"By the time she was 14, Nurse was very much on the radar of national team coach, Lisa Thomaidis."
"... the coaching staff asked her to come to China for a tournament. Nurse remembers just staring at Thomaidis like a deer in the headlights, then taking time to talk it over with family. “School was still going on, and I was like, ‘These are grown women. They talk about taxes, marriage. I don’t even know what’s happening over here, mom!’” she says now, laughing."
She was 17 when the best college basketball program in the world found her. ... “They called late — they didn’t know how old I was,” she says. Nurse had already narrowed her list of schools down to a top five, but she went on a visit to Connecticut and tossed that old list. She was sold."
"I knew if I went to Penn State or Indiana, one of those other schools, I’m going to be really angry when I watch UConn win championships."
"... says Kiah Stokes, who was then a senior on the team. “Seeing her work ethic was crazy; every possession she wanted to get that stop, get that steal, pressure the ball. I thought that was incredible as a freshman, coming in, wanting to take that responsibility. You just don’t see that.”
"the highest-paid player in the WNBA makes a little north of $100,000, and the lowest-paid comes in a little south of $40,000 plus accommodation, a car (if they want one) and a couple meals a day."