Year III is in the books.
And what an amazing year it was. Once again.
The Maritime Women’s Basketball Association concluded in mid-June with the Halifax Thunder posting a repeat performance, winning its second straight Pro*Line Stadium Series championship.
The 2024 Final Quartet was held at Dalhousie University in Halifax, featuring Thunder, Lake City 56ers of Dartmouth/Cole Harbour, Fredericton Freeze and Saint John’s Port City Fog.
Halifax defeated Port City in one final while the 56ers used a last second shot to eliminate Fredericton and punch their ticket to the final where the powerful Thunder prevailed.
It was a remarkable 2024 with the league expanding to seven teams with the Miramichi Hericanes taking the league by storm, playing competitive basketball, drawing large crowds and producing the league MVP, Lauren Rainford.
The Pro*Line Stadium Series Legacy Cup is scheduled to be held at a New Brunswick site in 2025.
So how did the MWBA come to be, anyway?
Read on about its history.
The MWBA: Spawned During a Pandemic
The idea behind creating the Maritime Women’s Basketball Association came along innocently enough.
During the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2022, a long-time Basketball New Brunswick coach was busy using technology to keep the basketball world together.
Saint John’s Paul Hickey created a popular Zoom video conference call featuring a number of guest coaches and speakers from across the basketball world.
One of his guests with Canada Basketball’s national women’s team head coach Lisa Thomaidis, who also guides perennial U SPORTS powerhouse University of Saskatchewan Huskies. During her guest appearance, Thomaidis was asked about Canada’s challenges of staying near the top of the basketball rankings.
She said Canada is supplying more and more top-level talent, but our country is the only high-end FIBA entrant that does not have a professional women’s basketball league.
On the call that day was former BNB president Brad Janes, who reached out to Thomaidis following the call to discuss the possibility of creating a pro league in Canada. Janes also talked with Mike MacKay, the performance manager of Canada Basketball’s women’s high performance program and reached out to Canadian Elite Basketball League commissioner Mike Morreale to discuss the challenges of creating a professional league in Canada.
Those conversations extended to a number of other university coaches across the country, but it also meant the idea of a professional league would be a costly endeavour out of the gate.
‘My first thought was always to create a league in the Maritimes off the hop due to easier travel and geographical rivalries,’ said Janes, who lives in Fredericton. ‘Some back of a the envelope math showed it would be a costly endeavour if we weren’t sure how the reaction would be. More conversations with more coaches and potential interest groups indicated maybe we look at developing a competitive amateur league with present day university players, maybe some pros home for the summer and former players in our own regions. That idea seemed to strike a chord and eventually, the snowball started to roll.’
Phone calls, emails, texts and messages were bandied about in mid-spring and suddenly, the interest started to spread.
‘We’re incredibly lucky to have such a close-knit basketball community in the Maritimes and it’s really a seven degrees of Kevin Bacon scenario where someone knows another person, who knows that person and you’re off to the races,’ said Janes. ‘Travel was critical in the initial stages so the league was designed to keep things in a pretty tight regional scenario to start when you consider expenses such as hotels, gas and meals. We believe we have the makings of some good rivalries.’
There are three teams in Nova Scotia and four in New Brunswick. The building blocks are in place.
Two teams in Halifax including the Hornets and Thunder and geographical neighbour Lake City 56ers created easy rivalries. Fredericton Freeze, Port City Fog, Moncton Mystics and Miramichi Hericanes create natural provincial rivalries.
The 2022 inaugural season was a smashing success with large crowds and competitive games highlighting the 10-game schedule.
The league gathered three times during the first and second seasons for weekend ‘tournament’ style action and played provincial rivals four times along the way. In 2024, the league played a more balanced schedule without weekend events.
The Legacy Cup featured an outstanding weekend of basketball in Halifax, with the hometown Hornets defeating city rival Halifax Thunder in a dramatic final.
In 2023, it was just as exciting, a tremendous season and capping it all off at Saint John’s TD Station, which produced the record-setting crowd of 1,079 for the final.
In 2024, just over 650 watched at Dalhousie University.
The MWBA featured a number of present day U SPORTS or Canadian Collegiate Athletic Association players and also included several pros. In fact, Karissa Kajorinne, the league’s leading scorer with the Windsor Edge (now Lake City 56ers) in 2022 and who spent one season with the Thunder, signed a professional contract and played in Portugal for the 2022-23 season right out of the MWBA. She was soon followed by two more MWBA players who signed pro deals. Tiffany Reynolds of the Thunder is in Nicaragua and Sophia Widmeyer of the Hornets was in Dublin, Ireland for the 2023-24 seasons. Following the 2024 season, two more players turned professional including Alaina McMillan (Thunder) in France and Elizabeth Iseyemi (Lake City) in Germany.
The MWBA conducted itself in a professional manner.
All of the franchise owners understood that.
‘The MWBA did not condone teams showing up with short rosters and mismatched uniforms, that is something all of those involved agreed on,’ said Janes. ‘We wanted a professional game presentation and the league’s code of conduct will back that up. Commitment of the players is the number one challenge. Once that fell into place and players realized just how competitive and well-run the MWBA was, it’ll be a natural place to play.’
So why begin a league?
‘We want present day players to continue playing and improving and we want former players to stay involved in the game as opposed to maybe playing co-ed pickup or the odd weekend tournament here and there,’ said Janes. ‘This is about promoting female basketball players, female coaches, officials, minor officials and team executives and marketing. From playing now to long term athletic development on and off the court. This has a chance to turn into something very strong and forward-thinking. It is incredible the amount of qualified people are on the MWBA board and there is a real strength within the franchise commitments.’
Janes also wanted to thank Thomaidis, MacKay and Morreale along with the many coaches and administrators he spoke with.
‘I can’t say enough about Lisa, Mike and Mike and so many others who accepted out-of-the-blue cold calls or emails and just ran with advice and suggestions,’ he said. ‘So much information was invaluable to how the league could and should look. Something borrowed and something new, but we hope the MWBA takes off.’
It certainly did in 2022, 2023, 2024 and the league’s planes are hitting the runway once again for 2025 with seven teams.
You can contact the MWBA at mwba.league@gmail.com