TORONTO — Sarah Nurse was driving residence from a latest PWHL Toronto follow when she received a little bit of sage recommendation.
It wasn’t from a podcast or a good friend on the telephone. 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 fun.
The billboard she drove previous is one in every 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 — through which she broke a document for factors in a single event (18) — Nurse has develop into one of many greatest faces in girls’s hockey.
She turned the primary lady to seem on the duvet 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 girls’s skilled hockey. This month, she starred in a Canadian Super Bowl commercial and was one of many busiest athletes throughout NHL All-Star Weekend, showing at a number of league and companion occasions.
“In all places you flip, it’s like, there’s Sarah,” mentioned Canadian nationwide group 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 girls and gamers of coloration, 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 group at Dulcedo Administration, a expertise company, to make Nurse not simply one of many faces of the sport, however somebody with the form of superstar 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 usually 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 style and sweetness — fields which are usually exterior the areas of experience for conventional sports activities businesses. Nurse, nevertheless, wasn’t enjoying 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 enjoying girls’s skilled hockey was not a most important supply of revenue.
Dulcedo, which launched as a modeling company however has since expanded into different industries, together with sports activities, might give Nurse extra alternatives to department out.
“She didn’t simply need to be often known 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 offers me faux eyelashes or places lipstick on me. I used to be like, this may very well be the beginning of one thing nice, as a result of I felt like they received me.”
Houlton signed Nurse to blue-chip sports activities companions like CCM and Adidas but in addition 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 course of a interval of upheaval in girls’s skilled hockey. The CWHL folded in March 2019, and many of the gamers banded collectively to sit down out {of professional} hockey till a greater league was shaped. Then the 2020 girls’s world championships had been canceled as a result of 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 vital second to earn a living — 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 group.”
To the teaching employees, regardless of the very fact she couldn’t skate within the months main as much as the event, Nurse had greater than confirmed her price to the Canadian nationwide group.
“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 ideal job getting her again.”
“What I really 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 be able to play heart and play wing. She will be able to win attracts, she’s arduous to play towards, you possibly can belief her in powerful matchups,” mentioned Ambrose. “For thus lengthy with the nationwide group, that was her m.o. No matter you wanted, she was there.”
Nurse made the group and was wholesome in time for the beginning of the event. She additionally secured Olympic campaigns with Basic Mills, Sportchek, RBC and extra.
Crew Canada rewrote the document books in Beijing, going undefeated within the event to win a gold medal. Nurse, who began the event 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 event (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 subsequent 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 Photographs)
Ninety minutes earlier than the NHL All-Star red-carpet occasion, Nurse was in a lodge 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 duties had began days earlier than, with media and promotional appearances. Earlier that morning, she was on the ice for an out of doors follow with the PWHL gamers chosen to characterize the brand-new league on the NHL’s tentpole occasion. She then made a shock go to to a women hockey group with teammates Renata Quick, Natalie Spooner and Adidas.
After leaving the lodge, she’d stroll the purple carpet, shock one other women hockey group — 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 abilities competitors, which Nurse was on the ice for on Friday evening, or the regular-season PWHL recreation she performed on Saturday.
“That complete week was a blur,” Nurse mentioned.
“I don’t even know if we had been anticipating what occurred there when it comes to, like, you possibly can’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.”
All the things 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 group 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 subsequent 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 together 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, style and sweetness, entrepreneurship and group. 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 just lately, Dyson. She’s additionally signed different paid partnerships with magnificence manufacturers akin to Dove, L’Oréal and Revlon.
Manufacturers focused Nurse after her Olympic efficiency, however that’s only one a part of the entire package deal. She’s outgoing with an affable appeal, an infectious snicker and an ease on digital camera.
“It comes all the way down to character, and Sarah may be very a lot one-of-one,” Houlton mentioned. “Sarah can present up on set straight away from bed and look superb, sound superb, and provides the model the perfect 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 group is cautious concerning the intentions of potential sponsors. “I have to ask all the appropriate inquiries to make it possible for this model is not only utilizing her so that they examine their range 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 aims.
Throughout All-Star weekend, Nurse did a shoot with RBC that included Poulin and Toronto Maple Leafs star Auston Matthews, which oriented Nurse as an expert athlete — not simply as a girls’s hockey participant. Her Adidas marketing campaign has her aligned with huge names exterior of the game, akin to Mahomes and Messi. “Our aim is to get her neck and neck with the perfect,” Balshin defined.
Auston Matthews, Sarah Nurse, and Marie-Philip Poulin answered hard-hitting questions from children 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 Evening,” through 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 thought began as a means for Nurse to offer away her brother’s season tickets each occasionally nevertheless 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.
“Individuals 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 energetic on TikTok, posting movies whereas doing her make-up or skincare, or offering motivation to younger women and girls who go to her channels. All the things will get put right into a content material calendar that Balshin manages, and each morning she sends Nurse a textual content outlining “all the things we’ve to fret about as we speak.”
“She has made our lives rather a lot happier,” Nurse mentioned. “We received to some extent the place there was simply an excessive amount of occurring and we couldn’t facilitate all the things.”
With all the things occurring off the ice, it’s simple to overlook that Nurse is one in every of Canada’s finest 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 Photographs)
“I might love to sit down 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 in truth don’t know the way she does it however I really like her for it.”
Nurse is aware of it seems like there’s rather a lot on her plate however insists she’s excellent at compartmentalizing. Ryan, additionally her coach with PWHL Toronto, says Nurse’s different duties have “by no means negatively impacted who she is as a participant.”
“I believe she’s discovered methods to truly use it to ensure she nonetheless has an affect within the recreation,” he mentioned. “She’s beneath a highlight and beneath a microscope a lot. I believe that sense of delight she most likely will get with that has most likely pressured her to do the additional work.”
“I’m very aware of the truth that for me to do all of this different stuff, I have to carry out my finest on the ice,” added Nurse, who scored two objectives on Tuesday evening, together with the sport winner towards Minnesota.
Gone are the times of gamers akin 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 finest gamers aren’t getting wealthy enjoying girls’s skilled hockey.
“The advertising and marketing does imply rather a lot to them and is a most important supply of revenue,” 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 will take one thing unexpected for Nurse to not be on the 2026 Olympics.
Nurse has considered pursuing a number of paths, from actual property funding to launching a clothes line or a manufacturing firm. “I positively have aspirations to develop and develop into totally different sectors,” she mentioned.
“We would like her to be a face of hockey, interval, not simply girls’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. Photographs: Mark Blinch / Getty Photographs, Nicole Osborne / NHLI through Getty Photographs)
