Women’s Basketball
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In a pre-pandemic perfect world, Lisa Thomaidis would now be celebrating coaching Canada to its first ever Olympic women’s basketball medal, and looking forward to defending the University of Saskatchewan Huskies’ 2020 national championship title.
But coronavirus changed all that, causing the postponement of the Tokyo Summer Olympics (originally scheduled for July 31-Aug. 9, 2020) until 2021, and delaying—possibly cancelling—the 2020/21 university basketball season.
“Certainly it was disappointing when (the Olympics) were postponed, since we had built a lot of momentum and we had a great run through the Olympic qualifying and we were looking forward to going to Tokyo and capitalizing on that,” said Thomaidis, who helped guide Canada’s recent rise in the rankings up to fourth in the world.
“Now, we have to change course and focus on 2021 and our players and staff are going to have to be flexible and innovative to continue to grow and improve, even if we can’t be on the court together face-to-face. So we are focusing on doing some things virtually. Like everyone, we are having Zoom meetings, doing what we can to be prepared for next year.”