Toronto Raptors fans may never have heard of one of the newest talent seekers shaping the basketball team’s future, because her work largely takes place on the other side of the world. But as the manager of scouting in Africa, Sarah Chan’s mission is to unearth the next Pascal Siakam.
When Chan, from South Sudan, volunteered to help out at a basketball camp in Kenya in 2017, she had no idea she was about to meet an NBA team executive named Masai Ujiri, and that it would lead to her dream job. Ujiri took quick notice of this well-spoken 6-foot-3 woman with obvious high-level basketball training, as she coached and related so authentically with the teens at his Giants of Africa camp.
The Nigerian-raised Raptors president eventually asked Chan about her background. Her life story involved leaving war-stricken Sudan for Kenya, finding basketball, and playing it in the United States and around the world. It included a tryout with a WNBA team and a master’s degree in international relations.
After their 2017 conversation, Ujiri was so impressed, he hired Chan to help organize, coach and scout talent for the growing series of Giants of Africa camps he holds each summer across the continent as part of the foundation he started in 2003. This past fall, Ujiri promoted her to a newly created position. Now she also co-ordinates the Raptors’ three other scouts in Africa to scour the continent to find talent.
“It’s so exciting for me, because if I go to Guinea, Botswana, Senegal or Angola – the least-likely places that people expect – and I find a kid that needs that opportunity, there’s nothing more gratifying than that,” Chan, 33, said recently in an interview at the Raptors Toronto practice facility, where she was meeting with front-office staff. “The trajectory of that player’s life will change, and in turn that player’s community, country and Africa all rise.”
The Raptors pride themselves on having a league-leading presence in Africa.
“There are many Pascals out there, they just need the opportunity,” said Chan, referring to Toronto’s Cameroon-born all-star. “That’s why it’s a huge responsibility to set the stage right for them. Using basketball as a tool to change lives can be an incredible thing.”
Chan, who speaks English, Swahili, Arabic and Dinka, sees herself in the young people she scouts. She grew up in the 1990s during a time of intense conflict between the north and south in Sudan. She, her parents, two brothers and sister lived among large groups of families. Often there were upward of 35 inhabiting a small mud-and-brick homestead, with latrines outside and compound walls surrounding them. She babysat younger kids. Her family often woke in the night to the harsh lights of pickup trucks outside, and men banging on their gates, demanding her father come outside.
“If you’re going to take a family down, you first try to take out the head of the household – that’s what they did to the people from the south,” recalled Chan, who said her father was taken many times, but survived. “My mom learned to mediate. I remember us kids would be hiding under our blankets. She would stand between the door and the family and say – with all kindness, strength and courage – ‘he is not here.’”
Chan’s family eventually got a precious opportunity – academic sponsorship for their parents to study theology at an evangelical university in Kenya. They moved in August of 1998, when Chan was 12. The scholarship included the girls’ schooling, too. Chan’s parents saved up so they could afford to include the two teenage boys as well, saving them from being enlisted as young soldiers.
The move to Nairobi was not smooth. Her father was detained at the airport for a long period before being released to go join the family in Kenya. They arrived just days before the U.S. embassy there was bombed, an event that killed 213 people.
They settled into a multicultural community in Nairobi, and her parents did odd jobs on campus to make money while studying. They cut grass, broke up stones to use as construction materials, and worked as night security. Their mother insisted they interact with other kids so they could practise their English.
Chan experienced sports for the first time in 2004 when she got to Laiser Hill High School, an international school where joining a team was mandatory for all students. Chan, a tall girl, tried and hated swimming and tennis, before eventually trying basketball. The game was a perfect fit for her and she improved quickly. Any time she heard bad news about the raging civil war back home in South Sudan, Chan would use basketball as a distraction.
A talented boy from her high school earned a basketball scholarship to Union University, in Jackson, Tenn. Once there, he told Union women’s coach Mark Campbell about the tall and gifted Chan. After watching her on video, Campbell offered her a scholarship to his Division II program – one with a history of recruiting African centres.
“It was going to be my first time out of Africa, my first time going anywhere on my own,” Chan said. “I remember my dad saying ‘My daughter, I want you to never change for anybody. When you go there, you’re representing you, our family, our nation and Africa.’”
So in 2007, Chan went to the United States to play for the Lady Bulldogs at this private evangelical Christian university, where she studied history and political science. She experienced for the first time how it felt to be stared at for being a tall woman with dark skin. School and basketball pushed the limits of her body and mind.
“She’s the fastest player I ever had, north-south, no doubt, and at that height, that’s really saying something,” Campbell said. “She had good hands, she was really instinctual and she used her quickness.”
In her four seasons at Union, playing power forward and centre, she tallied 1,892 points and 1,112 rebounds. She was an NAIA All-American and helped spearhead two Division II national titles.
“There is an awesome thing about the kids I’ve had from Africa on my teams when it comes to respect for authority, value of education and a very strong family mindset,” Campbell said. “Most choose to stay in America and make money to send to their families back home. Sarah wanted to take the education she acquired here and put it to work back home, making a difference in Africa.”
Chan got a tryout for the WNBA’s Indiana Fever, but she didn’t make the team. She played professionally for a while in Europe and then across Africa, too. Troubling reports about the continuing conflict in South Sudan had Chan longing to become an agent of change on her home continent.
So she returned to Nairobi to get a master’s degree at United States International University Africa, majoring in peace and conflict studies. She also played basketball for the university and competed in two FIBA Africa Women’s Club Championships in 2015 and 2017. At the 2015 edition, she was the top scorer and rebounder and made the all-tournament team.
As she was finishing her studies in 2017, Chan was eager to be a difference-maker. That’s when she heard about the local Giants of Africa (GOA) camp where she would eventually met Ujiri. That day, she was just hoping to volunteer with the kids. She called up someone she knew from school who was helping organizing it, Abel Nson, (who as it turns out is a scout and GOA camp organizer who worked for Ujiri).
“I just thought it would be an opportunity for me to help people and learn something,” Chan said.
Chan noticed lots of cameras documenting the camp but didn’t realize they were there to report on this passion project by Ujiri, the first African general manager of a North American sports club. She didn’t know who Ujiri was.
“From the first day, there was no … showboating, just her pure interactions with the boys and the girls,” Ujiri said. “You saw it from the first minute, and I noticed but I didn’t say anything to her at first.”
Ujiri followed Chan’s career thereafter, and noticed her strong eye for young talent. She impressed him with her diplomacy while working with African politicians, venue operators, and sports organizations to create opportunities for players to showcase their basketball skills. She has built a robust network of contacts within Africa.
Ujiri credits Chan with convincing him to hold GOA camps this past summer in Juba, South Sudan and Mogadishu, Somalia – places affected by great conflict. The inclusion of girls, and helping them experience basketball – especially those at risk of being teen brides – is close to Chan’s heart and Ujiri’s, too. Chan also has her own foundation that helps women and girls in war-torn countries.
“Sarah has an eye for basketball talent, which for me selfishly that’s the first thing I’m looking for in a scout. I’m not just going to hire someone because they are nice,” Ujiri said. “Juba and Mogadishu, those are not easy places to hold camps, but we have to visit those places and help girls there, too, and she was instrumental in taking us there. Those to me are the powerful things we also have to do.”
Ujiri invited Chan – an engaging public speaker – to share her story at two recent events in Toronto. She joined Ujiri on stage at a GOA Youth Summit for Toronto high schoolers, and at a panel for the group Women In Sports Events.
Emotional GOA videos played at those events show Chan in a vocal leadership role with male and female campers. She is coaching girls in Mogadishu, wearing a hijab just as they are and yelling out to them. ‘‘Be proud to be girls. We love you. You are so respected and so valued.” She tells the boys in South Sudan to look around the court and consider all their fellow players as brothers:.”I don’t care what tribe they’re from and nobody should.”
Patrick Engelbrecht, the Raptors director of global scouting and international affairs, said watching Chan with campers in South Sudan was just one example of her value in Africa. She noticed things in the way the players communicated with one another that represented their tribal differences – things the Raptors coaches at the camp might not have. The players see Chan playing one-on-one with the male coaches (“she’s one of us,” Engelbrecht says), and they learn about respect for women.
“Sarah is a child of the soil of East Africa,” Engelbrecht said. “She knows what those kids have gone through, especially those displaced because of civil war. She is extremely passionate about making the kids feel special. So, when she spoke to the boys at camp in South Sudan, many of us there coaching felt tears come to our eyes. When she talks to young African players, it’s like she is talking to her younger self.”
Engelbrecht, who was born in South Africa, describes the challenges of scouting in Africa, where most players don’t have the access to gyms, equipment, coaching and programs that they would in North America. Basketball’s popularity is just budding. A scout there has to help create opportunities for young players to show their skills, then imagine what that player could become someday if given the right resources.
“You have to have relationships, and Sarah does because she’s played in Africa and people respect her, and they give her information,” Engelbrecht said. “She is really special. She knows what questions to ask to learn about a kid’s background and his desire to play – like maybe he took 10 buses and borrowed money to get to the practice, but he didn’t have any shoes to play in.”
Chan is on the lookout for specific things when she’s meeting young African players.
“First thing I look at is his intelligence, and character,” Chan said. “And then the talent is the last thing and within that talent, how athletic is he? How strong is he, how is his vertical, how is his work ethic, how would he fit with the Raptors? I watch closely when they’re warming up because that’s when most people think it doesn’t matter, but it really does matter, because you’re preparing. How does he go to war?”
STAVANGER, Norway (AP) — Few chess players enjoy Magnus Carlsen‘s celebrity status.
A grand master at 13, refusing to play an American dogged by allegations of cheating, and venturing into the world of online chess gaming all made Norway’s Carlsen a household name.
Few chess players have produced the magical commodity that separates Norway’s Magnus Carlsen from any of his peers: celebrity.
Only legends like Russia’s Garry Kasparov and American Bobby Fischer can match his name recognition and Carlsen is arguably an even more dominant player. Last month, he beat both men to be named the International Chess Federation’s greatest ever.
But his motivation to rack up professional titles is on the wane. Carlsen, 33, now wants to leverage his fame to help turn the game he loves into a spectator sport.
“I am in a different stage in my career,” he told The Associated Press. “I am not as ambitious when it comes to professional chess. I still want to play, but I don’t necessarily have that hunger. I play for the love of the game.”
Offering a new way to interact with the game, Carlsen on Friday launched his application, Take Take Take, which will follow live games and players, explaining matches in an accessible way that, Carlsen says, is sometimes missing from streaming platforms like YouTube and Twitch. “It will be a chiller vibe,” he says.
Carlsen intends to use his experience to provide recaps and analysis on his new app, starting with November’s World Chess Championship tournament between China’s Ding Liren and India’s Gukesh Dommaraju. He won’t be competing himself because he voluntarily ceded the title in 2023.
Carlsen is no novice when it comes to chess apps. The Play Magnus game, which he started in 2014, gave online users the chance to play against a chess engine modeled against his own gameplay. The company ballooned into a suite of applications and was bought for around $80 million in 2022 by Chess.com, the world’s largest chess website.
Carlsen and Mats Andre Kristiansen, the chief executive of his company, Fantasy Chess, are betting that a chess game where users can follow individual players and pieces, filters for explaining different elements of each game, and light touch analysis will scoop up causal viewers put off by chess’s sometimes rarefied air. The free app was launched in a bid to build the user base ahead of trying to monetizing it. “That will come later, maybe with advertisements or deeper analysis,” says Kristiansen.
While Take Take Take offers a different prospect with its streaming services, it is still being launched into a crowded market with Chess.com, which has more than 100 million users, YouTube, Twitch, and the website of FIDE the International Chess Federation. World Chess was worth around $54 million when it got listed on the London Stock Exchange.
The accessibility of chess engines that can beat any human means cheating has never been easier. However, they can still be used to shortcut thousands of hours of book-bound research, and hone skills that would be impossible against human opponents.
“I think the games today are of higher quality because preparation is becoming deeper and deeper and artificial intelligence is helping us play. It is reshaping the way we evaluate the games,” especially for the new generation of players, says Carlsen.
At the same time, he admits that two decades after becoming a grand master, his mind doesn’t quite compute at the tornado speed it once did. “Most people have less energy when they get older. The brain gets slower. I have already felt that for a few years. The younger players’ processing power is just faster.”
Even so, he intends to be the world’s best for many years to come.
“My mind is a bit slower, and I maybe don’t have as much energy. But chess is about the coming together of energy, computing power and experience. I am still closer to my peak than decline,” he said.
Chess has been cresting a popularity wave begun by Carlsen himself.
He became the world’s top-ranked player in 2011. In 2013, he won the first of his five World Championships. In 2014, he achieved the highest-ever chess rating of 2882, and he has remained the undisputed world number one for the last 13 years.
Off the table, chess influencers, like the world No. 2, Hikaru Nakamura, are using social media to bring the game to a wider audience. The Netflix series “The Queen’s Gambit” burnished chess’ unlikely cerebral sex appeal when it became one of the streamer’s biggest hits in 2020.
And in 2022 Carlsen’s refusal to play against Hans Niemann, an American grand master, who admitted to using technology to cheat in online games in the past, created a rare edge in the usually sedate world of chess. There is no evidence Niemann ever cheated in live games but the feud between the pair propelled the game even further into public consciousness.
Whether chess can continue to grow without the full professional participation of its biggest celebrity remains to be seen.
Canadian pairs team Deanna Stellato-Dudek and Maxime Deschamps along with ice dancers Piper Gilles and Paul Poirier headline a strong field at Skate Canada International. The Canadians say they’re excited to perform in front of a home crowd as the world’s best figure skaters arrive in Halifax. (Oct. 24, 2024)
INZAI CITY, Japan (AP) — Nico Echavarria shot a 6-under 64 on Friday — matching his 64 on Thursday — to lead by two shots over Taylor Moore and Justin Thomas after the second round of the Zozo Championship in Japan.
Thomas shot 64 and Moore carded 67 with three others just three shots off the lead including Seamus Power, who had the day’s low round of 62 at the Narashino Country Club.
Thomas has twice won the PGA Championship but is winless in two years on the PGA Tour.
Eric Cole (67) and C.T. Pan (66) were also three behind heading to Saturday.
Nick Taylor, of Abbotsford, B.C., is the top Canadian at 5-under and tied for 16th.
Ben Silverman, of Thornhill, Ont., is two shots back of Taylor and tied for 31st.
“I’ve never had a lead after 36 holes,” said Echavarria, a Colombian who played at the University of Arkansas. His lone PGA win was last year in Puerto Rico.
He had a two-round total of 12-under 128.
“I’ve had it after 54, but never after 36, so it’s good to be in this position. There’s got to be some pressure,” he added. “Hopefully a good round tomorrow can keep me in the lead or around the lead. And how I said yesterday — the goal is to be close with nine holes to go.”
Rickie Fowler, a crowd favorite in Japan because of his connections to the country, shot 64 to go with an opening 68 and was four shots back going into the weekend. Max Greyserman was also four behind after a 68.
“It would be amazing to win here,” said Fowler, whose mother has Japanese roots. “Came close a few years ago.”
Fowler tied for second in 2022
Fowler described his roots as “pretty far removed for Japan, but I’m sure I have relatives here, but I don’t know anyone. Japanese culture’s always been a fairly big part of life growing up. I always love being over here.”
Japanese star Hideki Matsuyama shot his second 71 and was 14 shots off the lead.
Defending champion Collin Morikawa shot 67 and pulled within eight shot of the lead, and Xander Schauffele — British Open and PGA winner this season — shot 65 and was 10 behind after a 73 on Thursday.
“I feel like I’ve got a good game plan out here,” Morikawa said, another player with Japanese connections. “I just have to execute shots a little better.”
“I am the defending champ, but that doesn’t mean I’m immediately going to play better just because I won here,” he added. “It’s a brand new week, it’s a year later. I feel like my golf game is still in a good spot. I just haven’t executed my shots. When that doesn’t happen it makes golf a little tougher.”
Schauffele turned 31 on Friday and said he was serenaded before his opening tee shot. He also has ties to Japan. His mother grew up in Japan and his grandparents live in the Tokyo area.
