They now head to Edmonton for the second part of their two-part summer.
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The 81-73 win capped off a flawless 5-0 run for the Canadians at the 2015 Pan Am Games tournament in Toronto, marking this country’s first major worldwide basketball tournament win.
Her victory was swiftly followed by a triumph for compatriot Eli Dershwitz as the world junior champion overcame Joseph Polossifakis of Canada 15-9. Edmonton has become the second home for the women’s team, which has been centralized here for training camps and exhibition matches the last two summers.
So often dwarfed by their neighbours to the south, the land of maple syrup and mounties has made a good fist of besting them in the Pan American Games now being held in Toronto, highlighted by a dramatic victory over the USA in the baseball final to clinch the gold medal.
Notre Dame had an additional representative on Team USA’s Pan Am Games staff this weekend, as athletic trainer Anne Marquez completed her second tour with USA Basketball.
The American rapper is set to perform at the event’s closing ceremony on July 26, but some mad Canucks are doing anything they can to stop it. Upset that the Toronto 2015 organising committee chose the 38-year-old to headline the ceremony ahead of local artists, more than 50 000 people have signed an online petition on Change.org demanding that the rapper be replaced with a Canadian act.
While the win was very much a coming out party for Canada’s youngsters, the team’s veterans were perhaps the happiest to finally have a gold medal.
“So, out here, it was a big physical struggle to get touch by touch, most importantly, I kept my cool, I didn’t freak out”.
“We have a team of ex-big leaguers and younger guys and I’m glad to be representing Canada again”, added Hodges.
The women’s soccer team was the story of the 2012 Olympics for Canada. Simple, right? Yes, but the 10-team, 24-game FIBA Americas tournament won’t be easy, even without the Americans, who qualified for Rio by winning the 2014 worlds.
One was placed under the sand of the volleyball courts at the Chevrolet Centre by the Canadian company that created them, Hutcheson Sand and Mixes. “We’re a bit unknown to the Canadian public, so hopefully we’re a little more known now”. “This is just the beginning”.
The women’s basketball team does not yet have the cachet of an Olympic medal, but the nucleus of gifted young players Thomaidis is constructing the team around have similar star power and certainly similar athletic gifts.
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Guard Kia Nurse was the star for the Canadians, scoring a brilliant 33 points while Natalie Achonwa added a further 13. With Canada risking collapse, it was Nurse who drove into traffic and connected on a tough layup, plus a foul, to steady her team. Kia Nurse, the guard from Hamilton who has already won a national championship at Connecticut, was sensational against the United States. Despite there being little enthusiasm for the competition among locals when the games commenced, some positive results have since produced unexpectedly high TV ratings in the host country.
