Members of the Toronto Tempo's expansion roster – from left, Maddison Rocci, Kia Nurse, Aaliyah Nye and Teonni Key – pose for photos after the team's pre-season opener on April 29.Bailey McLean/Getty Images
Oren Weisfeld is the author of The Golden Generation: How Canada Became a Basketball Powerhouse.
The Toronto Tempo have come out swinging.
After being officially announced as the newest expansion team to join the Women’s National Basketball Association two years ago, Tempo president Teresa Resch built a team that Canada can be proud of. The former Toronto Raptors executive chose a name and logo that resonates with young people and branded the Tempo as Canada’s team, with regular season games to be played in Montreal and Vancouver in addition to downtown Toronto.
She hired former WNBA champions Monica Wright Rogers and Sandy Brondello as general manager and head coach, respectively, before targeting experienced players from diverse backgrounds in the expansion draft and going on a free agency spending spree to round out a roster that appears ready to compete right away.
Monica Wright Rogers feels uniquely qualified to lead expansion Tempo
As critics of women’s sport grasped at straws, searching for something to be upset about during the rollout of Canada’s first pro women’s basketball team, one issue did stand out: a seeming lack of homegrown Canadian talent. And then the Tempo brought in two Team Canada mainstays: Halifax native and U Sports champion Carly Clarke as assistant coach, and WNBA All-Star Kia Nurse, who was born and raised in Hamilton, Ont.
The Tempo have nailed basically every decision so far, giving sports fans plenty to be excited about ahead of Friday night’s season opener at Coca-Cola Coliseum.
Now comes the hard part.
Canadian sport is facing a crisis at the grassroots level, especially for young women. While opportunities in the professional ranks have improved in recent years, with the country welcoming pro teams in women’s soccer (Northern Super League), hockey (Professional Women’s Hockey League) and basketball for the first time in its history, the community infrastructure needed to foster youth sports has quietly fallen apart.
“The challenges are as profound as they are numerous,” reads the 2026 Future of Sport in Canada Commission report. “Meager funding; archaic governance practices… a problematic focus on high-performance; a lack of protection for children; and the commodification of some athletes.”
The biggest problem is the lack of access and opportunity for regular kids who want to play sports recreationally. House leagues and public school programs are being replaced by private clubs, academies and facilities that endorse a pay-to-play model rather than a fair and fun one. It’s no wonder a staggering 44 per cent of Canadian parents cannot afford to register their children in organized sport.
Tempo players, including local product Kia Nurse (11), celebrate Lexi Held's three-pointer against the Connecticut Sun on April 29.Bailey McLean/Getty Images
The professionalization of sports – by which young athletes can get burnt out, hurt, bullied or squeezed by the high costs – is a worldwide issue, with 70 per cent of kids dropping out by age 13. But female athletes in Canada face an additional set of challenges, including a lack of opportunities, role models, coaches, media coverage and job security, along with archaic double standards. Girls’ sports participation dropped off a cliff during COVID-19, and still lags behind boys today, with nearly four in 10 Canadian girls missing out on the benefits of sport.
Various levels of government have been slow to react to these trends. After two decades of zero increase to the federal sports budget (so effectively years of steady cuts, given inflation), it took Canada having one of its worst showings ever at a Winter Olympics in 2026 for Ottawa to announce a new $755-million investment into expanding sports access last week. The private sector hasn’t done much better, with Canadian companies like Rogers and Bell and major brands like Nike and Gatorade historically focusing on men’s sports.
The problem may not look so bad if you focus on the elite. A record number of Canadians are set to suit up in the WNBA this season, and a golden generation of Canadian women are playing NCAA basketball. Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, a superstar point guard from Hamilton, Ont., is expected to win his second consecutive NBA MVP award. But elite athletes represent a small fraction of Canada’s sporting landscape, and their success risks hiding the problems facing regular Canadian kids.
Fortunately, the Tempo are part of the solution, showing Canadian girls what is possible. As Canadian 12-year WNBA veteran Tammy Sutton-Brown said, “The value of ‘you can see it, you can be it’ and the value of meeting your favourite players up close and personal, there’s something really special about that.”
“We’re all pretty much Vince Carter kids,” Ms. Nurse said about her generation of Canadian ballers. “I think in 10 to 15 years, you’re gonna look back and you’re going to see all these kids… and when you have a conversation with them about where their love for basketball and their influence in basketball came from, they will be Tempo kids.”
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But it’s about more than inspiration – it’s about changing the culture. In 1995, the Raptors arrived in a hockey town and became the gold standard for Canadian sport, culminating in an NBA championship in 2019. That went well beyond the court itself. Look no further than your neighbour’s driveway hoop or the frenzy of Jurassic Park during the NBA playoffs to see how the Raptors meaningfully changed Canadian culture, while providing a blueprint for politicians and business leaders to follow.
The Tempo are looking to do the same. A few weeks ago, former Raptors president Masai Ujiri was announced as a principal owner, and he will lead a coaching mentorship program that supports Canadian women called Tempo Rising. Meanwhile, majority owner Larry Tanenbaum plans to finance a $100-million state-of-the-art practice facility at Exhibition Place for 2028. Crucially, the facility will be open to public use and provide 2,200 hours of community programming per year.
By intentionally appealing to girls around the country, providing opportunities for local talent, investing in infrastructure that supports the community and paying tribute to the pioneers that shaped women’s basketball in Canada, the Tempo have the potential to build on an incredible wave of momentum and push Canadian women’s sports forward. They can become the new standard-bearer that future programs look toward for inspiration. It’s not hyperbole to say that this can change the country.
“It’s going to create such a massive influx of talent and desire for basketball,” Ms. Nurse said. “The ones that don’t [go pro]... they’re going to be leading our society – they’re going to be the ones that are sitting in those front offices making all the decisions about the world.
“I think that’s a special part of what this organization could do.”