For Canada's basketball Olympians, it's down to serious business

TORONTO -- On Friday, Canada’s basketball women landed in what’s becoming for them a familiar place: on the precipice of an Olympic journey and getting their final introductions in front of a local audience.

Four years ago, that meant a party at a swanky fusion resto in Toronto’s King West neighbourhood. It was giddy and even a little seat-of-the-pants, the team having qualified via one of those last-chance tournaments -- on Canada Day, yet, which made the whole London trip loom like an unexpected blind date.

This time around, at Ryerson’s Mattamy gym, they practised. Just a light bit of work was scheduled, actually, with an exciting Friday night on tap of - well, more practice, actually, an evening session of work ahead of a weekend of more of the same and early next week, off to the U.S. for a final series of exhibition games against Australia, France and the United States before the Rio tournament starts for real Aug. 6.

They’ve never been short of that kind of work ethic, this group, and it’s always been the starting point of their court identity. But only now is the sweat expended being matched by other incremental improvements and gains -- in experience, in success, in funding and planning and exposure, and they all fit together -- the sum of which means they will travel to Brazil amid more expectations than ever before in their history.

“We’ve always been a proud and prideful group of women that will do the dirty things - we will scrap,” said Natalie Achonwa, who has had a courtside seat for the program's rise, going from teenage sensation to at 23 years old one of the squad’s young sages. “From the outside of the basketball court, I think, is where things have really developed … there’s all kinds of resources available to us now that we just didn't have  when I started out.”

That would include Mattamy, site of the team’s Pan Am Games run that was part of the program’s golden summer of 2015 that included the FIBA Americas tournament win that earned them their Rio spot. This time around, they go with entirely different aims and outlook. “I’ve been telling everybody - we want a medal,” said Achonwa.

It may not happen just yet in an environment that the U.S. still bosses - they haven’t lost an Olympic tournament game in 24 years - but there's reason to believe that for Canada’s women, the party is over and the real work is just beginning.

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