Kia Nurse, the 19-year-old star of Pan Am basketball, led Team Canada to a gold medal with a 33-point performance on Monday.
The gold medal in basketball was a first for Canada at the Pan Am Games, and a first for Nurse, the youngest player on the team.
But Monday’s game in front of 3,000 people wasn’t the first time Nurse has played in a high-stakes match. And at 19 years old, she’s well-acquainted with championships.
Full Coverage: The Pan Am Games
She plays for the University of Connecticut Huskies and averaged 10 points a game as a freshman last year as the team went on to win its third straight NCAA title. She scored 399 points over her 39 games, giving her the 10th highest season total for a freshman at the school, according to the Huskies website.
She also won the 2014-2015 American Athletic Conference Freshman of the Year award, was named to the conference’s All-Freshman Team, and won the freshman of the week twice over the 2014-2015 season.
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The six-foot-tall Hamilton native went to St. Thomas More High School where she won the OFSAA championship in 2012 and 2013.
But Kia isn’t the only star athlete in her family. In fact, her family excels at just about whichever sports they choose.
Probably the most famous of her athlete relatives is her uncle Donovan McNabb, the Philadelphia Eagles quarterback who led his team to Superbowl XXXIX (where they lost to the New England Patriots), as well as four conference championships.
Her brother, Darnell Nurse, was drafted seventh overall by the Edmonton Oilers in 2013 and won a gold medal with Team Canada the 2015 World Junior hockey tournament.
The Nurse patriarch, Richard Nurse, was born in Trinidad and Tobago, raised in Hamilton, and played wide receiver for the Hamilton Tigercats as well as the Winnipeg Blue Bombers. And Kira’s mother, Cathy, played university basketball at McMaster University.
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