‘She wants to be like you’
February 18, 2016 | Women's Hockey, Andy Baggot
Sarah Nurse is embracing the opportunity to serve as a role model in the hockey world
Sarah Nurse doesn't think of herself as a trailblazer and is reluctant to discuss her status as the first black player in the history of the Wisconsin women's hockey program. As her impact on the game's next generation has come into focus, however, the junior winger has embraced the idea of being a role model for those choosing to follow her path. | From Varsity Magazine
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BY ANDY BAGGOT
UWBadgers.com Insider
If Sarah Nurse ever had a doubt about her status as a pioneering role model, the feeling disappeared one day last October.
The Wisconsin women's hockey team was in San Jose, California, for its season-opening non-conference series with Providence when a mother and daughter approached Nurse and struck up a conversation with the junior winger.
It turned out to be an inspiring moment for the child, but also for Nurse, the first black student-athlete to skate for the women's program at UW.
"She looked like me," Nurse said of the girl.
The mother explained that her daughter was in her first year of organized hockey. She said the girl had been playing basketball and soccer, but after seeing Nurse play for the Badgers, she wanted to follow that path.
"She wants to be like you," the mother told Nurse.
Nurse scored three goals in the series as Wisconsin emerged with 5-1 and 8-1 victories, but the reason the mother and daughter approached Nurse had as much to do with her roots as her world-class skills.
"That was really special for me," Nurse said of the moment. "Just knowing that I can have an impact on little kids."
This is the same Nurse who, until now, had been reluctant to talk about her ground-breaking place in Wisconsin women's hockey history while being put on the marquee for Black History Month.
"I don't want to say it's been a difficult journey for me to find my sense of belonging and things like that," she explained. "It's just something I haven't really spoken about very much. For me, it was kind of like finding the right words, finding the right way to verbalize how I feel and what my opinions are. That was holding me back a little bit."
At one point in the conversation, Nurse, whose father, Roger, is black and whose mother, Michelle, is white, was asked if she had a specific point she wanted to make. She did.
"Obviously I'm referred to as half-black, half-white and I think I've really tried to stay away from those terms," she said. "I've gone to being bi-racial, but I am white and I am black because I don't want to feel lesser of something."
"That was really special for me," Nurse said of the moment, "just knowing that I can have an impact on little kids."
Nurse noted that some acquaintances have made jokes that fall short of being funny.
"I've been asked, 'Do you only celebrate half of Black History Month? Are you only half offended?' she said with a wry laugh. "I've really tried to stay away from things like that. That's what's been really important for me."
Nurse's reserved ways off the ice belie an outspoken game on it. Her primary hockey gifts are her smarts and athleticism, things she picked up from a remarkable gene pool based in Hamilton, Ontario.
Her father was a standout lacrosse player and now is a match official. Her uncle, Richard, was a wide receiver for the Hamilton Tiger-Cats of the Canadian Football League. Her aunt, Raquel, played basketball at Syracuse, where she met her husband and Sarah's uncle, former NFL quarterback Donovan McNabb.
Nurse's cousin, Darnell, was a first-round NHL draft pick of Edmonton in 2013 and is a highly-regarded defenseman for the Oilers. Another cousin, Kia, is a standout point guard for women's basketball powerhouse Connecticut. Another cousin, Tamika, played women's basketball at Oregon and Bowling Green.
"I've been exposed to so many different sports and so many different activities," Nurse said. "Just being able to watch different people in my family play different sports, it's gotten me to play a little bit of everything. That's really a huge part of what's shaped me as a hockey player.
With a nudge from her parents when she was 6, Nurse ultimately broke the mold when she chose to pursue hockey instead of basketball.
"We said, 'If we're going to sign you up for one and you can only pick one, which one are we going to sign you up for?'" Roger Nurse recalled. "She said, 'I want to play hockey.'"
Sarah said she kept playing basketball until she was a teenager, but her heart was at the ice rink, where she played on boys' teams until she was 11. Now her younger brothers, Elijah and Isaac, are making names for themselves as hockey players.
"It feels very natural to me," Sarah said of her chosen sport. "My parents had a huge part of that for me. They said, 'Do what you love.' I did love to play basketball — I played till I was 14 years old — but I loved hockey more."
Nurse said her parents encouraged her to follow her heart.
"It doesn't matter what other people before you have done," they told her. "If you love doing what you're doing, keep doing it."
Sarah Nurse got her first hockey recruiting letter when she was in eighth grade and ultimately picked Wisconsin over Ohio State, Syracuse and Quinnipiac. Her father said she wanted to go to a bigger school and his daughter became enamored with the atmosphere in Madison.
Being headquartered in a state-of-the-art facility like LaBahn Arena, playing before sellout crowds and having the sport celebrated on campus — winning four NCAA championships will do that — were part of the draw.
Wisconsin coach Mark Johnson said race played a role in the recruitment of Nurse, who skated on the same Stoney Creek Jr. Sabres team as current teammate and junior center Sydney McKibbon.
"To me it was exciting," Johnson said. "Four, five, six years ago, the (athletic) department was asking 'What are we doing with diversity? Are we out recruiting and giving kids opportunities? In our world, there's more of that today in hockey than there was years ago just because of the influence of the sport."
Nurse, a business major, said diversity wasn't a major discussion point with Johnson and his assistants, Dan Koch and Jackie Friesen, leading up to her decision to come to UW.
"I know playing hockey for a long time it's predominantly a white sport," Nurse said. "I think people, when they meet my dad for the first time, it's like, 'Oh, is that her real dad?' So it's kind of different. So I think Coach Johnson, Jackie and Dan kind of had that feeling when they first started recruiting me, but I don't think it was an area of emphasis."
There are other African-Americans at the NCAA Division I level — Nurse skated against Cassandra Vilgrain of New Hampshire last season; Kaliya Johnson of Boston College and Kelsey Koezler of Princeton are two other recent trailblazers — but Nurse is the first to play for the Badgers.
"I was hoping we'd get her just because we could bring in someone of color that is a good player," Johnson said. "It was just a matter of convincing her this was a spot she could grow in."
Nurse, who shares a campus residence with Johnson's daughter, Mikayla, and junior defenseman Jenny Ryan, currently leads the second-ranked Badgers with 21 goals and is tied for third with 31 points.
"She's a great kid," Johnson said of Nurse. "Always got a smile on her face."
On the ice, Nurse's athleticism is impossible to miss. She seems to have an extra gear that allows her to maneuver around defenders. When she gets to the net she knows how to finish, sometimes spectacularly.
"We said, 'If you can only pick one, which one are we going to sign you up for?'" Roger Nurse recalled. "She said, 'I want to play hockey.'"
Nurse made ESPN SportsCenter's Top 10 highlights Jan. 24 when she scored vs. North Dakota. She angled through multiple defenders while cutting from the right circle to the slot. The conversion helped the Badgers to a 3-1 victory.
"She's got that ability to separate herself from people," Johnson said. "Then, at different times when she gets into a phone booth and has to stick-handle out of it, she does some incredibly athletic things."
In the process of playing 103 career games for the Badgers, Nurse said she's never heard a racial epithet on or off the ice.
"I don't think, me personally, there's been disrespect pointed towards me," she said. "It's more the little whisperings that I've heard — 'That's the black girl on the hockey team.' kind of thing — and that doesn't offend me. That's kind of how people describe me and I'm not going to get too bent out of shape about that."
Is race a big topic of conversation among Wisconsin student-athletes? Nurse said it varies between sports and people, with heavier discussions involving members of the football and basketball teams.
"I think it's more of a curiosity thing with my team," she said. "I'll get asked certain questions, harmless questions."
Such as?
"When I got here (as a freshman) they asked if I knew how to cornrow their hair," Nurse recalled with a laugh.
Grace, patience and awareness have served Nurse well on and off the ice. Thanks to that moment in California, she knows a lot of people are watching from afar and her influence is on the rise.
"Just knowing that I can have that effect on little kids," Nurse said. "Whether it's kind of breaking out of their shell or doing something that maybe they're not normally supposed to do, I think that's really important to me."
