By Tristan Forde
While being one of Canada’s top programs over the last few years, the Toronto Metropolitan University (TMU) Bold women’s basketball team has shown their tenacity both on and off the court.
The team’s willingness to step up for political and social issues reflects trends in today’s mainstream sports culture.
In 2018, Fox News host Laura Ingraham told LeBron James to “shut up and dribble” when he mentioned the political state of America and how it affected his family. This raised the conversation of whether or not athletes are qualified to speak on the political and societal issues in the world.
In more recent years, it has become more normalized for athletes to publicly share their views on more than just their sport. Examples include Megan Rapinoe pushing for equal pay for women in sports, Billie Jean King advocating for gender equality and social justice and Naomi Osaka speaking out against her experiences with racial discrimination.
“If you’re going to kneel and protest, try to educate yourself and figure out why you’re really doing it”
Behind all the tears, sweat, physical prowess and excitement that comes with sports, it’s easy to forget that these athletes are members of the same society as everyone else and are affected by the same social and political discourse. Third-year forward Jessica Keripe says if an athlete has an audience, they should use it to get people thinking about the messages behind their actions.
“Whether you have a platform or not, the continued conversation is important to actually getting anything done,” said Keripe.
In the past two years, the Bold women’s basketball team has reflected this theme through forms of both protest and empowerment.
In February 2023, the team released a call to action for the Bold’s failure to hold any initiatives for Black History Month that year, as previously reported by The Eyeopener.
With the Bold roster featuring several Black-identifying players, athletes such as third-year guard and forward Zoe Idahosa were inspired to speak up. Idahosa said with the reassurance of former Bold teammate, Eve Uwayesu, she built the confidence to use her platform when feeling isolated.
With the support and validation of her teammates, Idahosa and a few others took action by kneeling during the playing of “O Canada” ahead of all their games, in a similar fashion to the movement popularized by former San Francisco 49ers player Colin Kaepernick.
The former quarterback chose to kneel during the playing of the national anthem at a 2016 NFL pre-season game to protest against police brutality and the injustices committed against Black people in the United States.
This would become a recurring action committed by athletes in an effort to protest these injustices, such as in the WNBA, NBA and NHL bubbles during the COVID-19 pandemic after the murders by police of Ahmaud Arbery, George Floyd and Breonna Taylor.
Despite playing basketball competitively since the age of 12, Idahosa’s main inspiration for practicing the sport has always been to support her parents financially. As a first-generation Canadian, she witnessed her mother go through the trials and tribulations of acquiring Canadian citizenship.
When the Bold had failed to acknowledge Black History Month, to her, it overlooked the efforts and progress that many Black athletes made throughout the season.
“Two years ago, [TMU Bold] forgot about Black History Month, and that’s when it started,” said Idahosa. “We kneeled and wore black shirts to protest that they forgot it.”
While the initiative started as a protest against the Bold’s lack of action for Black History Month, fourth-year forward Lauryn Meek said it can also represent more of the systemic issues still present within Canada.
Both Meek and Idahosa pointed out a lack of consideration for Indigenous communities and their needs among other social barriers for various minority groups in the country as issues that should be highlighted as well.
“There are a lot of systems that need to be dismantled that are rooted in racism, for example, the fact that we’re on Indigenous land,” said Idahosa. “Our government has made multiple promises to Indigenous communities and doesn’t make good on any of them.”
“Two years ago, [TMU Bold] forgot about Black History Month”
Idahosa and her teammates have been using their platform as Black athletes to not submit to conformity and bring light to issues in the country, including those that affect the Black community and others.
“It is a privilege to be on this team and I’m gonna use it as much as I can to support the causes that I support,” said Idahosa.
In her second year on the team in 2023-24, Idahosa said she did not participate as much in the kneeling as she wanted to avoid it coming off as performative and ensure there was a clear message being sent.
“If you’re going to kneel and protest, try to educate yourself and figure out why you’re really doing it,” said Idahosa.
For Keripe, the action of kneeling wasn’t so much about activism but raising awareness and being true to oneself—she said the country has “a lot of things we can improve.”
“I’m not really going to stand for the anthem and stand for the words that are in the anthem. I just don’t think that it’s actually a reality for everyone that lives in Canada,” said Keripe.
In recent times, the Bold have pushed more attempts forward for Black History Month. Such as the Walk of Fame of athletes, the “Bold, Beautiful and Brilliant” t-shirts worn during the month of February in 2024 and 2025 and inviting John Carlos for a speech, as previously reported by The Eye.
“I feel like [TMU has] definitely improved, but it’s really like, never enough. I don’t know, I feel like it’s such a hard thing to quantify, what is enough?” said Idahosa.
She pointed to the school’s colonial history and said changing the name, among other actions, has shown improvement but there’s always more they could do.
“It begs the question on whether or not this stuff is performative and how we’re actually impacting these communities,” she said.
“We are finding ways to educate ourselves and others, and I’m hoping that continues”
In recent years, many social actions have become popularized as a form of performative allyship. For example, during the Black Lives Matter movement in 2020, people took to Instagram to highlight “Black Out Tuesday,” an online movement where people would post black squares to their feeds and add “BLM” to their profiles to protest against police brutality and systemic racism against Black people.
With so many people reposting the black square, it ended up drowning out information about the Black Lives Matter movement and, as found in a 2022 Social Media and Society study, becoming an example of performative allyship.
“All the things we thought got reformed by our hashtags on social media are still going on,” said Keripe.
Keripe is one of the athletes who joined the initiative to kneel during the anthem. She said, for a brief time, the team had stopped kneeling even though the issues they were addressing before had not been solved.
“Some people may think it’s disrespectful to people in the military and to Canada,” said Meek. “We’re just showing that we still have these certain battles that a lot of minority groups face.”
Having been a part of the Bold for four years now, Meek said she felt isolated during the time that the Bold failed to do any initiatives for Black History Month. But now, she kneels not only for fellow Black people who are faced with injustices but also for every other race.
“We are finding ways to educate ourselves and others, and I’m hoping that continues and it doesn’t just stop at a certain point in time,” said Meek. “There are gonna be more Black individuals, and more Indigenous individuals coming to this school and they need to be recognized.”
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