Nurse to star at Rogers Place, but it's Kia with WNBA, not Darnell's NHL
There's another Nurse coming to town, and no, she doesn't play hockey.
Kia Nurse is major league, though, just like her brother Darnell, who Edmonton sports fans know as a defenceman starring for the National Hockey League's Oilers.
Kia is a guard for the Los Angeles Sparks, who will face the Seattle Storm, her former team, in a Women's National Basketball Association exhibition game at Edmonton's Rogers Place on May 4.
Nurse has also starred for the New York Liberty and the Phoenix Mercury since turning pro in 2018 after a NCAA collegiate career with the University of Connecticut.
The exhibition game was originally scheduled for May 5 but was moved a day earlier to accommodate a potential Game 7 in the Oilers' current playoff series against the L.A. Kings.
And while Kia is technically the one crashing Darnell's sports home next month, Darnell and other family will be spending time soon in L.A., too, where Kia and the Sparks are soon to open their season following training camp.
"I think what I'm really excited about is we have actually kind of missed each other in the last couple of years and (now I can) cross over and see a playoff series," Kia told media during an online availability on Tuesday.
"My parents are coming here. I also live here (in L.A.) so I guess we can all get dinner together, and then D's going to play his games and we're going to go watch them and then come back to Edmonton, so I get a full extra week of my family, which is nice."
The prospect of playing a WNBA game in her home country is something the 28-year-old is excited for, not only as a point of pride for the women's national team member but also so family and Canadian fans can see her and others play live.
"Sometimes, we talk about it a lot with our national team, especially that we're not often at home and there's not many opportunities for our family to be there in person to see us on home soil," said the native of Hamilton, Ont.
"I'm excited about that and that opportunity to continue to be able to bring women's basketball at the highest level to Canada and allow fans I know on the west coast especially to be able to have the opportunity to see that in person."
And while Nurse has her brother as a link to Edmonton, she has a personal one, too: multiple national team training camps she attended in Alberta's capital city.
"There's so much history and beautiful history around women's basketball with the Edmonton Grads and that's something that we got to learn a lot about when we were there," Nurse said of the city's storied women's basketball powerhouse of a century ago.
"For me, playing in Edmonton I thought was something that is full circle from that really young age of being there with the national team to now being in the hopefully the middle and hopefully the prime of my career."
And she's encouraged by the women's hoops talent she is seeing coming out of her home country.
"We've got talent out the whazoo coming out of Canada and it's no longer just players that are going to the NCAA or playing those roles where they come off the bench for 10 or 15 minutes, we've got stars," she said.
"We're talking about stars of TSN's March Madness tournament for a reason and they're Canadians and it's so exciting to kind of have that, and from what I've seen in our little young program, it's only going to get bigger and there's only going to be more of them.
Nurse said it's also evident that interest in the women's game is growing on this side of the border given the response to the first time the WNBA staged a game in Canada: a sellout last year at Toronto's Scotiabank Arena for an exhibition game between the Minnesota Lynx and the Chicago Sky
"I think there has to be a place in Canada for our young women to see that because if this is happening now and they're not seeing that live every single weekend or every season for WNBA, think about what a (Canadian) team does to that next generation."
With files from CTV News Edmonton's Amanda Anderson
CTVNews.ca Top Stories
![](https://www.ctvnews.ca/polopoly_fs/1.6976345.1722029432!/httpImage/image.jpg_gen/derivatives/landscape_800/image.jpg)
BREAKING Celine Dion performs at the 2024 Paris Olympics
Beloved Canadian icon Celine Dion made her much-anticipated appearance during the closing of the 2024 Paris Olympic Games opening ceremony.
Jasper wildfire: 'Several weeks' before Jasper can return, premier says
Premier Danielle Smith said Friday afternoon in Hinton while weather conditions are cooler, the Jasper fire is still considered out of control and that Jasper residents can expect to be away from their homes "for several weeks."
'He was just gone': Police ramp up search for vulnerable 3-year-old boy in Mississauga, Ont.
Police in Mississauga are conducting a full-scale search of the city’s biggest park for a non-verbal toddler who went missing Thursday evening. Sgt. Jennifer Trimble told reporters Friday morning that there has been no trace of three-year-old Zaid Abdullah since 6:20 p.m., when he was last seen with his parents in Erindale Park, near Dundas Street West and Mississauga Road.
Driver charged after flashing high beams at approaching police
Orillia OPP arrested and charged a driver with impaired driving after flashing their high beams.
Canada's Christine Sinclair: 'We were never shown drone footage'
Canada soccer great Christine Sinclair said on Friday national team players were never shown drone footage during the more than two decades she was on the team, following a spying scandal that cast a shadow over the Canadians at the Paris Games.
Winnipeg senior's account overdrawn $146,000 for water bill
A Winnipeg senior is getting soaked with a six figure water bill.
Irish museum pulls Sinead O'Connor waxwork after just one day due to backlash
An Irish museum will withdraw a waxwork of singer-songwriter Sinéad O’Connor just one day after installing it, following a backlash from her family and the public, it told CNN in a statement on Friday.
At least 4 buildings burned at Jasper Park Lodge, others damaged: Fairmont memo
The Fairmont Jasper Park Lodge said Thursday afternoon most of its structures are 'standing and intact,' including its iconic main lodge.
She couldn't stop thinking about the guy she met at the Athens Olympics. Then a message from him changed her life
Omaira Gill grew up counting down the days to each Olympic Games. She wasn’t especially sporty, so she ruled out the prospect of competing pretty early on. But she still harboured Olympic dreams – even just spectating would do.