When Toronto’s Shayeann Day-Wilson was voted the Atlantic Coast Conference rookie of the year by NCAA coaches, not one person from her Falstaff neighborhood was surprised.
This is the same five-foot-six point guard who grew up doing basketball drills with NBA talent at eight years old. She entered college hoops with Duke this past season and dominated, leading all ACC rookies in scoring, while earning multiple player of the week honors.
ESPN ranked her the No. 4 rookie across the US in her class, midway through the season. Now she has the keys to the program at Duke after leading the team both in points (12.7) and assists (3.7).
What Day-Wilson has accomplished so far has been a dream come true for the 18-year-old who hopes one day to play in the WNBA. But when she thinks about her basketball journey, she said none of it would have been possible without the residents of Falstaff, a neighborhood in the Jane St. and Highway 401 area, who saw her potential first.
“That’s why I wear No. 30,” Day-Wilson said. “30 Falstaff, that’s where I’m from. When I wear that I feel unstoppable.
“That’s where I grew up and I’m never going to forget that.”
Day-Wilson spent more hours in the Falstaff community center down the street from her home than some of her own employees.
“They might as well have given me the keys,” said Day-Wilson.
Falstaff is often categorized as a neighborhood that struggles with gun violence. Day-Wilson used to be driven home every night at 11 pm from the community center to her de ella building after playing basketball even though it was just a three-minute walk.
When shootings occurred in the area, Day-Wilson knew all the negative connotations that would be associated with the place she called home. It upset her that it deterred some from potentially coming to play in her neighborhood of her, an area steeped in basketball tradition.
The Falstaff community center is where some of Canada’s basketball royalty have spent hours working on their craft: from young NBA talent such as Andrew Wiggins, RJ Barrett and Dalano Banton to veterans Cory Joseph and Tristan Thompson to past local stars such as Denham Brown, who scored 111 points in a game for West Hill Collegiate in 2002.
Patrick Shaw, a former community recreational co-ordinator and mentor to Day-Wilson, remembers getting calls from the young player’s mother at 9 pm asking when her daughter would be coming home from the gym. Day-Wilson would get him to lie and say she was doing homework, but she had already finished it before stepping onto the court. They used to sit in his office for hours and watch tapes of Kobe Bryant, Allen Iverson and Michael Jordan.
“Not everybody has the type of dedication. She would be literally in the gym seven days a week, every second that she got, ”said Shaw. “Probably by 14 or 15 (years old) she did 15 to 20 thousand hours of gym work.”
That hard work and dedication to her craft came from mom Rose, who did all she could to put food on the table for Day-Wilson and her three other siblings.
Her mother originally knew nothing about basketball, but saw how much her daughter loved it and began studying it herself. Knowing how late she was staying at the centre, she prepared dinner to drop off for her, while every morning waking up at 5 am and traveling from the west end of the city to work at Woodbine racetrack.
There was one time when her mother was kicked in the chest by a horse and was supposed to be in hospital. Instead, she showed up at her daughter’s basketball game.
To this day, her mother tells her, “I’m proud of you, but never settle,” Day-Wilson said.
It’s why it was so hard for Shaw to find a girls team when she was around 10, as competitive as she was. He put her on a boys club team, but despite being one of the best players, her parents complained that she was starting. It led Shaw to create his own AAU team called Sister’s Keeper, just for Day-Wilson. The organization supports youth in vulnerable neighborhoods in Toronto and helps young female athletes play basketball at the highest level.
but as she dominated basketball in the city, Day-Wilson was diagnosed with hyperthyroidism. She had just started attending Crestwood Preparatory Collegiate, after the school near York Mills Rd. and Victoria Park Ave. recruited her in hopes of building a basketball program around the talented point guard.
Her initial reaction was confusion. She did n’t know what the diagnosis meant for her and her basketball career. Some of her symptoms included weight loss/gain, rapid heartbeat, increased appetite and anxiety.
“The doctor said ‘You’re probably going to have to take three to six months off (from basketball).’ Right away, she started crying. I teared up,” said Shaw.
Two days after her diagnosis, she returned to the hospital and told doctors she wasn’t missing any part of her basketball season. Day-Wilson was determined to quietly dedicate herself to strict eating habits, taking her medication and avoiding stress.
The Canadian point guard turned Crestwood into a basketball powerhouse, losing just one high school game, and went on to win back-to-back Ontario championships. All this while visiting SickKids hospital multiple times a week.
“It showed me that I’m a warrior,” said Day-Wilson. “You know when you’re just born for something? I was like, I’m born for this. I’m a soldier. A lot of things don’t break me.”
Shaw credits that toughness to growing up in Falstaff.
Eventually, Day-Wilson had surgery to shrink the thyroid. She still takes treatment and medication while playing basketball at the highest level.
Shortly after, she committed to playing for Syracuse on a full-ride scholarship, but withdrew after the coach resigned amid allegations of inappropriate behavior.
As Day-Wilson looked for other schools, she was also representing Canada on the world stage for the first time in the FIBA under-19 World Cup in Hungary last summer. She led the team to a fifth-place finish, averaging 18.1 points and 5.9 assists, which was the second-highest average in the tournament.
That’s when she got a call from Duke’s new women’s basketball head coach, Kara Wilson. Day-Wilson would talk to other schools, but the opportunity to play for the Olympic gold medalist and WNBA champion was too much to pass up. Day-Wilson excelled at Duke, becoming the fifth in school history to win ACC top rookie honors.
Her goals are clear: become the first from her neighborhood to be drafted in the WNBA, play for Canada in the 2024 Olympics, and continue to inspire the next generation.
Day-Wilson has dreams of one day opening a community center, similar to the one in Falstaff that helped her discover her potential. She’s back in town now, training with local kids while planning to attend Canada Basketball camps this summer.
“She’s the flag-bearer to show that you can do the same thing. She changed the complexity of basketball in Toronto, ”Shaw said. “Coming from Falstaff, she she’s put Falstaff on the map. She’s put the city on the map.
“When you live in places like Falstaff, you can live anywhere and you can survive anywhere. Some people call it the mud. You are in spaces where things grow there and there’s beautiful things happening there, but there’s no soft here.”
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