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TORONTO — Sarah Nurse was driving residence from a current PWHL Toronto apply when she bought a little bit of sage recommendation.
It wasn’t from a podcast or a pal on the cellphone. The recommendation got here courtesy of a billboard on the facet of the highway in Canada’s most populous metropolis, that includes her personal face with the Adidas slogan “You bought this.”
“I used to be like, yeah, I do,” Nurse mentioned with amusing.
The billboard she drove previous is considered one of many throughout the nation, together with a large commercial at Yonge-Dundas Sq. — Toronto’s closest approximation to Instances Sq. in New York Metropolis — that pairs Nurse with Tremendous Bowl MVP Patrick Mahomes and World Cup champion Lionel Messi.
Nurse, 29, has had main partnerships up to now. In 2020, Tim Hortons and Mattel collaborated to make a Barbie doll in her likeness. In 2022, she was featured on a Cheerios field. However within the two years since her breakout efficiency on the Beijing Olympics — during which she broke a document for factors in a single match (18) — Nurse has change into one of many largest faces in ladies’s hockey.
She turned the primary lady to seem on the quilt of an EA Sports activities hockey online game with NHL 23. She was a key determine within the launch of the Skilled Girls’s Hockey League as a member of the player-led bargaining committee that struck a first-of-its-kind CBA in ladies’s skilled hockey. This month, she starred in a Canadian Tremendous Bowl business and was one of many busiest athletes throughout NHL All-Star Weekend, showing at a number of league and companion occasions.
“All over the place you flip, it’s like, there’s Sarah,” mentioned Canadian nationwide crew defender Erin Ambrose.
Nurse’s eight main endorsement offers put her forward of just about each different skilled hockey participant, exterior of a handful of NHL stars. Amongst ladies and gamers of shade, she is in uncharted territory.
Her ascension has been years within the making — all a part of a fastidiously crafted marketing strategy developed by Nurse and her crew at Dulcedo Administration, a expertise company, to make Nurse not simply one of many faces of the sport, however somebody with the form of celeb that transcends her sport.
“You don’t have to comply with basketball to know who LeBron James is,” mentioned her agent, Thomas Houlton. “That’s what we need to do for Sarah.”
Sarah Nurse holds the Barbie dolls impressed by herself and Marie-Philip Poulin in 2020. (Courtesy of Tim Hortons)
When Nurse signed with Dulcedo in 2019, her fame as a participant was already sturdy.
At 24 years previous, Nurse had already been a star on the College of Wisconsin, received an Olympic silver medal and been drafted with the No. 2 decide within the now-defunct Canadian Girls’s Hockey League. In these early days, Nurse was typically mentioned as one of many latest branches of a formidable athletic household tree.
Her father, Roger, was an elite lacrosse participant. Her aunt, Raquel, was a celebrated level guard at Syracuse College who married Philadelphia Eagles legend Donovan McNabb. Her cousins embody Kia Nurse, a two-time Olympian and WNBA all-star, and Darnell Nurse, a defenseman for the Edmonton Oilers.
With Nurse’s multifaceted attraction, a number of brokers got here calling.
However after the 2018 PyeongChang Olympics, Nurse, who graduated with a enterprise diploma, was trying to discover her pursuits in vogue and wonder — fields which can be sometimes exterior the areas of experience for conventional sports activities companies. Nurse, nonetheless, wasn’t taking part in in a typical sports activities panorama.
Within the CWHL, gamers had been paid solely small stipends — Nurse mentioned she made $2,000 as a rookie within the league — which meant taking part in ladies’s skilled hockey was not a major supply of earnings.
Dulcedo, which launched as a modeling company however has since expanded into different industries, together with sports activities, may give Nurse extra alternatives to department out.
“She didn’t simply need to be referred to as Sarah Nurse, the hockey participant,” defined Houlton. “And never simply as a chunk of the (household tree). … It’s been clear from the start that she actually needed to have her personal legacy.”
“After I first signed with them,” Nurse mentioned, “I did this glamor photoshoot, and I’d by no means completed something like that earlier than as a result of I’m a hockey participant — no one provides me faux eyelashes or places lipstick on me. I used to be like, this could possibly be the beginning of one thing nice, as a result of I felt like they bought me.”
Houlton signed Nurse to blue-chip sports activities companions like CCM and Adidas but additionally labored on build up her social-media profile to place her in areas exterior of hockey. “No skincare model goes to need to work with you if we don’t see skincare wherever,” he defined.
On the ice, Nurse was in one other Olympic cycle with Crew Canada main as much as the 2022 Video games in Beijing and in the midst of a interval of upheaval in ladies’s skilled hockey. The CWHL folded in March 2019, and a lot of the gamers banded collectively to take a seat out {of professional} hockey till a greater league was fashioned. Then the 2020 ladies’s world championships had been canceled because of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The stakes had been excessive within the 12 months main as much as the Olympics. For athletes with out big-ticket skilled contracts, the once-every-four-year window the Video games present is a important second to earn money — and a reputation for themselves. A knee damage throughout tryouts put into query whether or not Nurse can be wholesome sufficient to play.
“I got here out of the world championships in Calgary and I used to be on the fourth line — that’s not a protected place to be. Then I blew up my knee,” Nurse mentioned. “So I’m going into Olympic tryouts and I’m like, I don’t know if I could make this crew.”
To the teaching employees, regardless of the very fact she couldn’t skate within the months main as much as the match, Nurse had greater than confirmed her price to the Canadian nationwide crew.
“We knew that she was going to be an enormous a part of our program if she was wholesome sufficient to go,” mentioned Canada’s head coach, Troy Ryan. “The mix of her work ethic and the medical employees did an excellent job getting her again.”
“What I like about Sarah, as a teammate and as a hockey participant, is that she does the little issues proper. She’s versatile within the sense that she will play middle and play wing. She will win attracts, she’s onerous to play towards, you’ll be able to belief her in robust matchups,” mentioned Ambrose. “For therefore lengthy with the nationwide crew, that was her m.o. No matter you wanted, she was there.”
Nurse made the crew and was wholesome in time for the beginning of the match. She additionally secured Olympic campaigns with Basic Mills, Sportchek, RBC and extra.
Crew Canada rewrote the document books in Beijing, going undefeated within the match to win a gold medal. Nurse, who began the match on the fourth line, labored her means as much as the highest line with Marie-Philip Poulin and Brianne Jenner, and broke Hayley Wickenheiser’s Olympic scoring document with 18 factors in six video games. She set a document for assists in a single match (13) and have become the primary Black lady to win an Olympic gold medal in hockey.
“That was actually the catalyst for her to take that subsequent step,” mentioned Houlton. “And actually propelled us into what was the following part of her life.”
Sarah Nurse attends a postgame convention after the PWHL three-on-three showcase at Scotiabank Area throughout NHL All-Star Weekend. (Kevin Sousa / NHLI through Getty Pictures)
Ninety minutes earlier than the NHL All-Star red-carpet occasion, Nurse was in a resort room in downtown Toronto doing her hair, getting her make-up completed and taking pictures content material for her social media channels — nothing she wasn’t used to.
Her All-Star weekend tasks had began days earlier than, with media and promotional appearances. Earlier that morning, she was on the ice for an outside apply with the PWHL gamers chosen to symbolize the brand-new league on the NHL’s tentpole occasion. She then made a shock go to to a women hockey crew with teammates Renata Quick, Natalie Spooner and Adidas.
After leaving the resort, she’d stroll the crimson carpet, shock one other women hockey crew — this time with Canadian Tire and Poulin — and, 12 hours after her day began, play within the PWHL three-on-three showcase at Scotiabank Area. That a part of her schedule doesn’t embody the NHL expertise competitors, which Nurse was on the ice for on Friday night time, or the regular-season PWHL recreation she performed on Saturday.
“That entire week was a blur,” Nurse mentioned.
“I don’t even know if we had been anticipating what occurred there by way of, like, you’ll be able to’t even stroll a few steps with out somebody stopping and saying, ‘That’s Sarah Nurse, can I get an image?’” Houlton mentioned. “It was superb to see how far she’s come.”
Every thing about Nurse’s NHL All-Star weekend suggests the plan has labored. Within the final 12 months, Nurse has gotten so busy that Dulcedo added Phoebe Balshin to the crew as a senior athlete supervisor in January 2023. Her job was to create a extra strategic plan for Nurse’s model and assist her take the following step.
“After I first got here on, an enormous dialog was: Sarah works with so many manufacturers, however what’s her model? Who’s she? What’s her mission and imaginative and prescient?” Balshin mentioned. “So we principally constructed out a five-year plan along with her to take us by Milan (the 2026 Olympics.)”
To refine the method, Nurse recognized 4 particular intersections of her personal pursuits and development alternatives: hockey, vogue and wonder, entrepreneurship and neighborhood. A possible partnership should transfer the needle in no less than a kind of classes.
“If one thing doesn’t align with me, we’re not going to do it,” Nurse mentioned.
Nurse now has eight main sponsors: Adidas, CCM, RBC, Canadian Tire, Tim Hortons, EA Sports activities, Chevrolet and, most lately, Dyson. She’s additionally signed different paid partnerships with magnificence manufacturers equivalent to Dove, L’Oréal and Revlon.
Manufacturers focused Nurse after her Olympic efficiency, however that’s only one a part of the overall bundle. She’s outgoing with an affable allure, an infectious chuckle and an ease on digital camera.
“It comes right down to character, and Sarah could be very a lot one-of-one,” Houlton mentioned. “Sarah can present up on set straight off the bed and look superb, sound superb, and provides the model the very best efficiency they’ve ever seen.”
Nurse is a biracial Black lady and is vocal in her help of elevated illustration in a predominantly White sport. Her crew is cautious in regards to the intentions of potential sponsors. “I have to ask all the precise inquiries to make it possible for this model is not only utilizing her so that they verify their variety field,” Houlton defined.
They’ve additionally labored with companions that Nurse already had in her portfolio to make sure that her objectives are being met — not simply the model’s personal targets.
Throughout All-Star weekend, Nurse did a shoot with RBC that included Poulin and Toronto Maple Leafs star Auston Matthews, which oriented Nurse as knowledgeable athlete — not simply as a ladies’s hockey participant. Her Adidas marketing campaign has her aligned with massive names exterior of the game, equivalent to Mahomes and Messi. “Our aim is to get her neck and neck with the very best,” Balshin defined.
Auston Matthews, Sarah Nurse, and Marie-Philip Poulin answered hard-hitting questions from youngsters at an RBC press convention 😂
(through @RBC) pic.twitter.com/7T7k7bT8QV
— B/R Open Ice (@BR_OpenIce) February 5, 2024
Final week, Nurse launched “Nursey Night time,” during which she’s going to host younger Black women at PWHL Toronto video games, meet with them postgame and mentor them all year long. The concept began as a means for Nurse to present away her brother’s season tickets each every now and then however it ended up with a $50,000 donation from Rogers and a partnership with Black Lady Hockey Membership, a non-profit group centered on making hockey extra inclusive.
“Folks need to be concerned in something she does,” Balshin mentioned. “That’s form of how we snowball issues over right here.”
On high of promotional appearances and occasions, Nurse posts paid promotions on social media and has gotten extra lively on TikTok, posting movies whereas doing her make-up or skincare, or offering motivation to younger women and girls who go to her channels. Every thing will get put right into a content material calendar that Balshin manages, and each morning she sends Nurse a textual content outlining “every part now we have to fret about immediately.”
“She has made our lives so much happier,” Nurse mentioned. “We bought to some extent the place there was simply an excessive amount of occurring and we couldn’t facilitate every part.”
With every part occurring off the ice, it’s straightforward to neglect that Nurse is considered one of Canada’s greatest hockey gamers and a face of the PWHL in Toronto. She’s additionally the vp of the PWHL Gamers Affiliation and is on the Hockey Canada participant committee.
Sarah Nurse skates towards PWHL Montreal’s Mariah Keopple at Scotiabank Area. (Mark Blinch / Getty Pictures)
“I might love to take a seat down and see her calendar,” Ambrose mentioned. “I’m in awe of what she does away from the rink. I’m in awe of what she does on the rink. I honestly don’t understand how she does it however I like her for it.”
Nurse is aware of it appears like there’s so much on her plate however insists she’s superb at compartmentalizing. Ryan, additionally her coach with PWHL Toronto, says Nurse’s different tasks have “by no means negatively impacted who she is as a participant.”
“I feel she’s discovered methods to truly use it to ensure she nonetheless has an impression within the recreation,” he mentioned. “She’s underneath a highlight and underneath a microscope a lot. I feel that sense of delight she in all probability will get with that has in all probability pressured her to do the additional work.”
“I’m very acutely aware of the truth that for me to do all of this different stuff, I have to carry out my greatest on the ice,” added Nurse, who scored two objectives on Tuesday night time, together with the sport winner towards Minnesota.
Gone are the times of gamers equivalent to Nurse making solely $2,000 a season to play hockey. Within the PWHL, the minimal wage $35,000, with some high gamers making as a lot as $100,000. Nonetheless, even the league’s greatest gamers aren’t getting wealthy taking part in ladies’s skilled hockey.
“The advertising and marketing does imply so much to them and is a major supply of earnings,” Balshin mentioned.
The work that Nurse is placing in can also be laying the observe for all times after hockey, each time that comes. It might take one thing unexpected for Nurse to not be on the 2026 Olympics.
Nurse has thought of pursuing a number of paths, from actual property funding to launching a clothes line or a manufacturing firm. “I undoubtedly have aspirations to broaden and develop into totally different sectors,” she mentioned.
“We wish her to be a face of hockey, interval, not simply ladies’s hockey. And of inclusion in sport,” Balshin mentioned. “She needs to indicate younger women that they are often so many issues.”
(Illustration: Daniel Goldfarb / The Athletic. Images: Mark Blinch / Getty Pictures, Nicole Osborne / NHLI through Getty Pictures)
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