Canada basketball 3×3 Olympic team is ready for Paris

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A 3×3 basketball venue exudes chaos — loud music, manic announcers, six athletes in constant motion on a crowded half court, egged on by the crowd — but the Canadian women who have risen to the top of this emerging sport always find a quiet pre-game moment for themselves.

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Before they bound onto the floor one at a time, Kacie Bosch, Paige Crozon and the towering Plouffe twins, Katherine and Michelle, huddle up and hug it out.

“Katherine always says a prayer to watch over and protect us, and then it’s just us connecting with one another, taking a deep breath and remembering what’s important,” said Crozon. “Have fun. Do your best. Be you.”

Their best is usually better than the opponent’s, and Team Canada is 138-34 all-time in Women’s Series, AmeriCup and World Cup play — for a winning percentage of .802 — and has won 16 of 32 Women’s Series events, as well as one AmeriCup.

Their physical attributes contribute to that otherworldly success. The Plouffes are each about 6-foot-4, accurate shooters from distance and great defensive players; Bosch is five-foot-nine, quick and aggressive; Crozon six-foot-one and hard to guard. They are a better team with both Plouffes on the floor, to be sure, but everyone rotates in and out, such is the fast-paced nature of the game, and each one contributes.

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“Everybody leads in their own way,” said head coach Kim Gaucher. “In a small group, everybody has to step up in some way and I think Kacie is the one who keeps the energy light. If things are getting heavy, she finds a way to ease the tension in the room, in the group, and keep people focused, which is very much needed when you’re in a lot of high-stakes environments. I think she’s one of the reasons why you see this group being so loose prior to games.”

It’s their thing. They smiled, laughed and talked their way through a recent Women’s Series event win in Edmonton, in direct contrast to far more serious-sounding teams from Australia, Dallas and Puerto Rico.

“When we say that we are going to play with joy, play free, with peace, that is how we play our best,” said Michelle. “That is how individually we all feel our best, when we are all on the same page about that and we are not focused so much on the result, because we all know we are all there to win anyways. If our goal is to play free, have fun, be joyful and encourage each other, then the result takes care of itself.

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If we play like that and we lose, it still feels better than if we go out of character, play too tight and focus too much on things we can’t control.”

They are committed to their ritual and its mantra, to one another, to the high-octane version of the game they love most when playing it together, and to what is now a five-year pursuit of an Olympic medal. Crozon and the Plouffes have been in it since Day One in 2019, when they were mostly self-funded and largely left to their own devices by Canada Basketball. Bosch joined up in 2021, and they have been a formidable foursome since; rebounding from the disappointment of not being eligible to qualify for the Tokyo Games to winning the Women’s Series title in 2022 and 2023, to losing out on a Paris 2024 berth at a qualifier in Japan in early May before wrapping up the last of eight spots in the Olympic tournament in the final game of the last chance qualifying event in mid-May in Hungary.

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“In any sort of pursuing excellence there are going to be hard times you’ve got to push through,” said Katherine. “So it’s not all roses and ice cream, for sure.”

Five years ago, they had to buy their own flowers and treats, hotels and flights. They were playing as Team Canada, but Canada Basketball had yet to create the robust national team program that exists today. There was no budget, no head coach, no physiotherapist, no designated Canada Basketball lead, no depth behind them. Basketball Alberta’s then executive director Paul Sir raised $28,000 to handle the initial FIBA entry fee into the Women’s Series, and the athletes were immensely grateful for the assist, but they wore all the other hats necessary, and paid out of pocket to get their team off the ground and into the mix.

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“I think that’s part of what makes our group special, the commitment that we have,” said Crozon. “Michelle, Katherine and I and some teammates were totally invested, in every sense of the word. I think there were some hard feelings (with Canada Basketball) that first year. I think we now have perspective and understanding that they were working with a budget and didn’t necessarily have the vision that we had for ourselves. We knew there was something special here. No one else around us knew, but we didn’t need them to know. We had confidence in ourselves and we had goals to achieve and we were willing to sacrifice whatever it took.”

In 2017, the International Olympic Committee approved 3×3 for Tokyo 2020. The Plouffes, who spent time on the five-on-five national team and played pro in France, had already been watching their friend and fellow Edmontonian Steve Sir, Paul’s son, excel on the FIBA men’s 3×3 World Tour. Crozon, a Humboldt, Sask. native who had played on the junior national team with the Plouffes and at the University of Utah with Michelle, tried 3×3 at a youth event in 2011, and was a proponent.

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By 2019, the timing was right.

“I believe Michelle and Paige were plotting,” laughed Katherine. “I had just been released from the five-on-five team and decided not to go back. It was the perfect storm to launch into a new adventure.”

They had their three-woman core, but needed a fourth. Through that first season they fleshed out the team with Catherine Traer, Mariah Nunes and Brittanny Johnson, each of whom played in three tournaments. They won the last four of their seven events to finish second overall and put an exclamation point on their debut.

The COVID-19 pandemic wiped out the 2020 season, but Canada Basketball had seen enough to know the women were competitive and committed to building not just a team, but a program, so the national body jumped onboard.

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“When the Women’s Series started, we didn’t have a funding model or high performance program to even get to a point where, how do we select a team?” said Ron Yeung, Canada Basketball team lead for 3×3. “We didn’t have a pathway.

“And 3×3 is still not a core sport within Sport Canada. We are applying to become a core sport. But because of the success of the women’s team, we only recently, within the last couple years, got some funding from Own The Podium that is separate from the core funding we would get on the five-on-five side. So we committed a bit more post-pandemic and then we basically have come in and said we are going to support it. I came in roughly around 2021-22, put together the high-performance plan and strategy and program goals and gold medal profile pieces, and submitted it to Sport Canada and Own The Podium to get the ball rolling there.”

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The women’s 3×3 national team program now runs on $700,000 annually. Canada Basketball hired Gaucher, the former five-on-five national team star, as head coach. There is a travelling athletic therapist and access to an Integrated Support Team that addresses mental performance, physical training and medical needs. There are official training camps and a U23 program providing depth behind the Plouffes, who are 31, Crozon, who is 30 and Bosch who is 27.

“It took that one year to get off the ground, to say, ‘hey, we’re serious, please help us build a program,’” chuckled Katherine. “In order to be a high-level team, it definitely takes more than players to make it happen. It has definitely elevated how we are able to compete, just being able to mainly focus on what we need to do on the court and actually perform.”

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They used to show up at a tournament and gaze enviously at the support staff accompanying the well-funded national teams of China, USA and France in particular. Those nations still spend more, but Canada is in the game.

“Canada Basketball stepped up in a huge way,” said Michelle. “I think they saw the potential of our team and what we could do if we had some of those burdens lifted, finances and having organizational staff. Now we can focus more on performance and not wear so many hats. I think it has really helped us. But we definitely learned a lot and I wouldn’t change where we started because we were able to go through a lot of the growing pains at the beginning. It definitely gave us some perspective.”

It could be argued they had perspective the whole time. They knew, for instance, that paying for the pleasure of playing was necessary in 2019, but all agreed it could not and would not continue for long.

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“We were not going to keep doing it this way, where we’re paying out of pocket and trying to build something with no support behind us,” said Michelle. “So there was a point when we were willing to walk away, just because we know our value and we know what this team can do, but at what cost? So the fact Canada Basketball stepped up and people supported us in that way was just affirmation that we’re on the right road and even if we don’t have the medals that we want around our neck or the results we wanted at the end of the year, the journey is still worth it because of what it is creating in the wake of what we’re doing and who can come behind us and maybe have an opportunity.”

The Women’s Series circuit ramped back up with a modest schedule for 2021 and Team Canada again finished second overall. In 2022 they broke out, winning four of their six tournaments, including the Women’s Series Final. They repeated as champs the next year, winning six of 10 events, and cashing in like never before as FIBA ramped up the prize money. As a team, they won $87,000 US, and there were year-end payouts for Michelle, Katherine and Crozon as they finished in the top-10 player standings.

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They’re somewhere north of break-even on their initial investments in themselves now, and more importantly, they can look around at what they helped build, and be fiercely proud and immensely grateful for the opportunity.

“Our hope when we started the team was that it would be not just me and my sister, Paige and the rest of the gals who came onboard, but it would be something that lasts far beyond us,” said Katherine.

That doesn’t happen by accident, and to ensure competitiveness and longevity, the team had to ground the program in a healthy culture. Just as it was in 2019 when the Plouffes and Crozon went looking for players, the first criteria is character, but now Gaucher and Yeung have a hand in selecting who comes next.

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“They know the importance of chemistry on a 3×3 team,” said Michelle. “They’re also very well aware of the culture we created, so whoever comes in needs to be aware of that and fit in with the group, because the chemistry matters so much more in this game than five-on-five because it’s so fast. You need to know each other and read each other and really get along with each other, because there are so few of you. We really tried to create a culture of just having great people around us. Your character counts and that’s actually more important than how good a basketball player you are, and hopefully that sticks around as well.”

In the fall of 2021, Bosch went all in and has stuck around. The Lethbridge, Alta. native had declined an opportunity to join up in 2019 because she didn’t have the money to travel on her own dime. In the summer of 2021 she declined again, but the team reached out a third time in November of that year. They needed somebody for the inaugural AmeriCup in Miami, and Canada Basketball was paying the freight.

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“That was my first tournament,” said Bosch, who coached with Crozon at the University of Lethbridge. “I kept getting the invite to come back and play and I guess I became the staple fourth from that point on. It was honestly just by happenstance, because I was planning to move to New Zealand. I have dual citizenship. It was COVID. I’d had five trips cancelled, but was planning on living there. When November rolled around and my trip was cancelled again, I thought I might as well go play 3×3. It was the best thing that ever happened to me. Everything worked out.”

The team also brought in Rashida Timbilla, Christina Buttenham, Laura Anne Dally, Ceejay Nofuente, Samantha Cooper and Traer in 2021; Mael Gilles, Rosalie Mercille and Traer in 2022; Carly Ahlstrom, Cassandra Brown, Saicha Grant-Allen, Jamie Scott and Keishana Washington in 2023. And for this season, additions have been MacKenzie Smith and Brown, who is the team’s alternate for Paris, where the core four will try to get the job done on behalf of everyone who has contributed along the way. They couldn’t imagine doing it with anyone else.

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“Our connection is so real off the court, and on the court it really does show,” said Bosch. “The respect and admiration we have for one another is 100 per cent genuine and authentic. Everybody brings something different to the table, so when we do get the chance to just hang out and interact with each other as friends, it’s just instant chemistry, bouncing off each other, laughing all the time. It’s really the friendships you wait your whole life to find. We found them and we get to play basketball together. It’s so fun.”

In fact, it’s the funnest.

“I’m very unbiased when I say we’re the funnest,” said Katherine. “I think that’s what allows our group and whoever comes in to feel comfortable, we keep it light but we hold ourselves to the highest standard. We’ve all had environments and teammates where it is more a burden of pressure than a pressure that creates diamonds, as they say. Having the pairing of a high standard of excellence but with encouragement and belief in each other creates a lightheartedness and ultimately gratitude to be there. It is also a responsibility and privilege that we don’t take lightly. So ultimately, I play with a freedom. I don’t have to prove anything but I get to do this. I get to put my body on the court and on the line to push it to the maximum. That is a real privilege.”

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Added Crozon: “They’re some of my closest friends and the people I trust most in the entire world, and to have them as teammates is pretty special. I think the chemistry and cohesion we have is palpable among us. We can feel the trust amongst one another and I think that’s our secret sauce on the court, that chemistry, that connection we have. It’s something that has been fostered just by being present with one another. I think when we’re together there is an energy around the four of us. We care about one another as people first and foremost.”

When that cohesion and joy fades, they’re in trouble; something that became obvious to them after falling short in Japan. They went into the qualifier in early May seeded second of eight, but dropped the final 19-16 to the sixth-seeded Gangurrus of Australia, and with it the only Olympic berth on offer at that event. The clock was ticking.

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“It was the epitome of when we play too tight, too stressed, too focused on a result, that we don’t play well,” said Michelle. “It was just very plain for me to see. Everyone felt it afterwards and it wasn’t a good feeling.”

The Canadians were down to their final kick at the can. The last three spots in the Olympic tournament were up for grabs at the final qualifier in Debrecen, Hungary in mid-May. Canada again went in as the No. 2 seed of 16 teams, and knifed through the preliminary round by beating Chile (21-11), Lithuania (19-16) and Czechia (17-10), before routing Italy 21-9 in the quarter-finals.

Next up was Spain in the semi-finals, where the winners book their tickets to Paris. Canada started poorly, missing easy layups and falling behind 6-0. But they stayed calm and clawed their way back into the game, having learned their lesson in Japan. It was 18-18 with 11.2 seconds on the clock.

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“I’m glad we had that experience in Japan and were able to bounce back and have a great tournament in Hungary and use what we just went through to have in moments of toughness, like the Spain game, where we were down six points and had six fouls and we remained calm, cool and collected, which was the opposite of what happened against Australia, when the wheels fell off,” said Michelle. “Against Spain, we remained calm and got back in the game and were tied at the end, and then that crazy shot happened. We felt really quite good about that game, not because of the result, but how we handled ourselves.”

That crazy shot was 3×3 distilled to its essence. Spain’s Gracia Alonso gathered a rebound and with her back to the basket, heaved the ball toward the hoop. It dropped, the clock hit zeroes, Spain punched their ticket to Paris with a 19-18 win, and Canada had to regroup, pronto.

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“When we came to Hungary, we knew we were going to qualify,” said Bosch. “You never know what the journey is going to be like, but we knew in our heart of hearts we were going to make it. So when Spain hit that crazy, last-second shot over the girl’s head with no time on the clock, of course that’s the shot that’s going to send them in. Why would it be anything else? That’s just 3×3 in a nutshell.”

Hungary lost its semi-final to Germany, setting up the last gasp showdown with Canada for the one remaining Olympic berth. Five years’ worth of work came down to 10 minutes of playing time. Bosch, Crozon and the Plouffes huddled up, played with joy, and got off to a great start, leading 10-4 halfway through.

“There was never really a doubt,” said Bosch. “It was an outdoor court, the music was bumping, it was a bright, sunny day. We brought the joy and the fun back in. When we play our best is when we’re joyful and we’re making each other laugh, when we’re loose. It turned out great.”

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Canada routed the Hungarians 21-10 and clinched their Olympic berth.

“We love the drama, I guess. Get to the very last game against the home team and see what happens,” chuckled Bosch.

And now they get to see what happens in Paris, where they have wanted to be ever since a convoluted set of gender- and federation-based FIBA rules left them ineligible to qualify for the Tokyo Games.

The temporary court in Paris is situated in the shadow of the Eiffel Tower, and will host an eight-team round-robin. The top two teams advance to the semi-finals, the bottom two are eliminated, and the remaining four compete to determine the other two semi-finalists. China, the United States and France are seen as the top three, but 3×3 is a 10-minute or 21-point game, and any bucket inside the arc is worth one point, anything beyond is worth two, so a hot long-distance shooter can make the difference.

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As of July 21, Katherine, Crozon and Michelle were the first-, second- and third-ranked female 3×3 players in the world, while Bosch was No. 23. Team Canada was ranked No. 1 overall, but FIBA has installed them as the No. 5 seed for the Olympics.

“It’s so funny because people ask us what are your chances of winning?” said Bosch. “Well, our team is the No. 1 team in the world, so we are a medal favourite. However, our federation is not ranked as high as we are. All the other places have more people playing and the federation ranking is based on the top 25 players.

“Our expectations of ourselves are so high, we are expecting to get gold. It is what we all have our sights on and it’s super realistic for us. Anything less than that would be just heartbreaking.

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“But I feel it’s so important for us to do well so we can get more funding and get more people involved in the future to grow the game in Canada. There is a little bit of motivation there too. It’s important to us to leave that legacy.”

A medal always brings focus and funding, so that’s important. But merely qualifying for an eight-team Olympic tournament is also an achievement.

“Do I think a medal would help? Absolutely,” said Katherine. “Do I think it’s required for the program to continue to grow? No. Five years into a program and we’re at an Olympics where there are only eight teams. We’re taking a step back and saying ‘OK, that is actually fricking amazing.’ Ultimately if we continue to qualify, that will for sure help the growth. A medal would help bring support to the program, give credibility to the strength of the pool of players to invest in, and keep giving opportunities to more than four players.”

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It seems odd in a nation that has embraced five-on-five hoops, a country with 40 million citizens, that there were no attempts by teams in any other jurisdiction to take over as Team Canada from these four players. Michelle thinks she knows why.

“I know how much it took in terms of stepping out and risking failure. I already know that 99 per cent of people don’t want to do that.

“It is surprising I guess that more women don’t see this as a great opportunity. There haven’t been as many people as you might have thought there would be asking to try out for the team. That’s not there yet, because I think also we are still getting established as a program and having training camps and having those opportunities be official. It’s not like our first year when we were like, ‘hey can you meet us in Italy for a tournament,’ and that’s kind of like your shot.

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“So it has come a long way. I do think it will get there because of how well we’re doing and the opportunities it has created for us, but also for people to see there is another route to take if you don’t want to go the five-on-five route or maybe your game is just more suited for 3×3.”?

These women have been a gift to the game, and have received plenty in return and are grateful for all of it, good and bad. Their commitment has been unquestionable, their sportsmanship unwavering. They are the ultimate ambassadors. If they come home with a medal, great. If not, their contribution to the sport in this country will not be diminished.

“It’s so hard to get there and be able to call yourself an Olympian, and for them it was five years of build-up and now they’ve done it, so go enjoy this and play free, that’s my hope for them,” said Gaucher, herself a three-time Olympian as a five-on-five player.

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“They’re incredible individuals, they are so driven and so passionate and I think it’s why we all want the Olympics to go really well, because we all know Canada is watching. This is when you can make the biggest push forward for your sport and that’s ultimately what they want. They wanted to be able to call themselves Canada’s first 3×3 Olympic team, but they also see it as a great game. When we travel the world, it’s so huge in Europe and Asia and they want that here. They want to have another avenue for young kids and older men and women to represent Canada in this game. That’s what they have been striving for.”

Eventually, the Plouffes, Bosch and Crozon are going to hand it off to Canada Basketball. If there is a Paris Olympic medal to aspire to, if the culture has survived, the program has fostered excellence and other stars are ready to embrace the responsibility of being Team Canada, their legacy will be set.

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“Canada was given the gift of Michelle and Katherine Plouffe, Paige Crozon and Kacie Bosch having the will and personal desire to drive this country forward in 3×3,” said Paul Sir. “It wasn’t because of anything that was done to seek them out and build development. It was really kind of parachuted in, which is amazing. They are high-character, sincere, humble individuals who are literally doing this out of love for the game and really wanting to represent Canada and bring a medal home. I mean that with all my heart. This is the most wonderful group of individuals who could be representing our country.”

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