Every sports fan knows that women’s basketball is having a moment. Between the record-breaking viewership numbers, gaudy endorsement deals and WNBA expansion, the sport is growing at an unprecedented rate.
What they might not know is that Canada is very much at the centre of it.
The nation currently has three WNBA players, a record-119 NCAA Division 1 women’s basketball players, the fifth-ranked women’s program in the world heading to its fourth-straight Olympics this summer, the third-ranked girls program coming off a bronze medal at the Under-19 World Cup last summer, and a potential WNBA franchise coming to Toronto. And this is just the tip of the iceberg, with the senior women’s national team aiming to peak at the 2028 Olympics.
There are many factors involved in the growth of Canadian women’s basketball. But it starts at the grassroots level. And no program has done more to develop the next generation of female ballers than head coach Marlo Davis at Crestwood Preparatory College, where many of Ontario’s best young players have honed their skills. From Miami’s Shayeann Day-Wilson and Latasha Lattimore, to UConn’s Aaliyah Edwards, Oregon’s Phillipina Kyei, and Fresno State’s Taija Sta. Maria, Crestwood has sent 17 Canadian women to Division 1 programs since being founded in 2016.
“It changed the course of my life, 100 per cent, because coming from a regular public school to go to a private school, the expectations are on a different level,” Day-Wilson told me in 2022. “I thank God for that stage that I went through in my life because Crestwood was just really trying to push you to just be the greatest basketball player but also the greatest student… it allowed me to get to the point that I’m [at] right now.”
Crestwood is on an unprecedented run, winning four of the last five Ontario Scholastic Basketball Association (OSBA) championships, including this year when the team capped off an undefeated 17-0 season with a 94-55 win over runner-up Capital Courts Academy at Toronto Pan Am Sports Centre last weekend. Six of Crestwood’s 12 players are already committed to Division 1 programs, including seniors Toby Fournier (Duke) and Olivia Leung (Dayton).
Tucked away in a quiet residential neighbourhood near the Don Valley Parkway and 401 Highway, Crestwood Prep is a private co-ed high school that runs from grades seven to 12. It has been around since 2001, but the basketball program started in 2016, shortly after Davis returned from playing and coaching men’s basketball in the United States.
After moving back to his native Toronto, Davis worked as an outreach worker for a legal clinic and a supply teacher with the Toronto District School Board while coaching a girls AAU program out of Falstaff Community Centre called Sisters Keeper, which was built around Day-Wilson. However, when a player’s parent suggested that Crestwood was looking to form a basketball program, Sisters Keeper moved in, with Day-Wilson and five other athletes joining the school and Davis becoming a teacher and basketball coach. Meanwhile, a men’s program was started by head coach Ro Russell and built around Elijah Fisher, who is currently at DePaul.
Crestwood’s women’s program blossomed into a powerhouse, joining the Ontario Scholastic Basketball Association (OSBA) in 2018 and immediately winning back-to-back championships with Day-Wilson, Lattimore and Edwards. The school set a new standard for the newly formed OSBA and helped turn it into the best women’s high school basketball league in Canada and a top-three league in North America, completely shifting the landscape of high school hoops away from public school Ontario Federation of School Athletic Associations (OFSAA) model towards prep schools, which is currently where the best Canadian women play. In fact, according to Canletes Sports recruiting and ranking service, 16 of the top 25 Canadian girls in the class of 2024 play in the OSBA, with four of them attending Crestwood (the school also has the No. 1 player in 2025, No. 2 in 2026, and No. 1 in 2027).
Unlike the top Canadian boys, who still venture south of the border to join the best high school teams, face the best competition, and get the best opportunities to be recruited, Crestwood has levelled the playing field for Canadian girls. In addition to playing in the OSBA, they play in the same events as the top American schools and have anywhere from 30 to 40 NCAA coaches attend their practices. This year, Crestwood went 20-1 versus American competition, with their only loss coming to ESPN’s No. 1 ranked Archbishop Mitty.
“We’re playing all the ranked teams,” Davis tells Sportsnet.ca. “So parents, kids, families, coaches in Toronto are able to see that you can stay here and still play against [the best competition]… where on the boys side, in order to get in those spaces, you have to be over there.”
“He gives us opportunities,” Fournier, who is ESPN’s No. 9 ranked recruit in 2024, says about Davis. “He gives us so many games in America where we can play against the top schools… So, we just get the exposure that we need.”
Fournier grew up in Toronto, jumping from one sport to the next. She was always tall, sprouting to over six feet by the time she was 12, which was when she was hanging out on the sideline of an Elite Camps basketball program that her older sister was attending. The coaches noticed her height, put a ball in her hands, and the rest is history.
Fournier moved from Elite Camps to a North Toronto rep program to Greenwood College School, when coach Russell saw her play and put her in touch with Davis. Davis brought Fournier to Crestwood for a visit, introducing her to Edwards, who dropped 32 points that night and immediately inspired her to join Crestwood in Grade 9
Unfortunately, just as Fournier was getting set to take off, the COVID-19 pandemic put basketball on hold. Still, Davis was calling Division I coaches telling them to start recruiting the six-foot-three forward before it was too late. And when she did play in Grade 10, Fournier immediately became famous for throwing down dunks and dominating at the rim and on the boards, averaging 22.2 points and 16.7 rebounds per game in her first year. After participating in the inaugural women’s Nike Hoop Summit last year, she committed to Duke.
Though she is earlier in her career, standout freshman Avery Arije has a similar story. After a family friend’s daughter brought her to a Mississauga Monarchs Amatur Athletic Union (AAU) practice, head coach Kenny Manning took note of the six-foot guard and taught her the fundamentals of the game before Davis recruited her to Crestwood this season.
After spending the summer as the youngest player on Canada’s silver-medal-winning Under-16 team at the FIBA Americas championship, Arije joined Crestwood and averaged 8.7 points, 4.5 rebounds and 3.6 assists per game.
“I personally think in two years Avery is going to be the best player in Canada,” Davis says of Canlete’s No. 1 ranked player in the class of 2027. “I think her desire to get better is like — people don’t know how competitive this kid is. She’s the: ‘I’m going home and watching film’ [type]. Like, ‘I gotta get better tomorrow’… Whatever needs to be done she’s willing to do, and that’s outside of her God-given ability.”
“My main reason for coming here was because I wanted a bigger challenge,” Arije says. “Playing against the other girls, part of my development as well is playing against older, better players. And I knew Crestwood was the best opportunity for me to get that.”
But the best evidence of Crestwood’s stature as a top program might be the fact that they landed Agot Makeer, a skilled and athletic six-foot-one guard who was born in North Dakota but grew up in Thunder Bay, Ont., and joined the school this year. As Canletes’ No. 1 prospect in 2025, Makeer has the potential to be Canada’s next star — although she is still working on obtaining Canadian citizenship while fielding offers from the best women’s basketball programs in the NCAA.
This season, Makeer averaged a team-high 19.3 points, 7.7 rebounds and 2.8 assists on 45/30/69 shooting before being named MVP of the OSBA Championships after a 29-point performance in the final that showcased her long-range shooting ability with nine made threes.
Makeer has two older brothers and played on their teams from second to sixth grade due to the lack of high-level girls basketball competition in Thunder Bay. But after dominating St. Ignatius High School in Grades 9 and 10, scoring “35-point triple-doubles the whole season,” as she puts it, Makeer was ready for a bigger challenge and had to choose between several top American prep schools and Crestwood.
“Just seeing what Marlo has done for a lot of players and seeing what Crestwood has done for a lot of players made me want to be a part of it,” Makeer says, mentioning both Edwards and Day-Wilson. Makeer also wanted to stay in Canada to eventually get citizenship and play for Canada Basketball, a program she has been training with.
Makeer lives with a host family in Toronto and, like many of Crestwood’s players (and many across the OSBA), is on a scholarship to help with the school’s $33,500 tuition. But for all the good the prep system has done to help develop players and put them in front of NCAA recruiters, the number of “schools” popping up out of nowhere and the amount of money being funneled into high school sports is beginning to become a concern. After all, the OSBA is rapidly growing, expanding to two leagues with 17 teams on the women’s side this season, while the men have two leagues and 22 teams.
“I do think like we’re getting away from what all this is really about, which is high school sports … we’re not professionals,” Davis says. “I think getting the high school experience out of it is important… And when it’s just: I play basketball and go home and I don’t know my classmates and things like that, I think it takes away from what we’re really trying to establish here.”
Davis would like to one day see OSBA games be packed full of fans, with rivalries being established similar to how the public-school model used to work. He believes the OSBA should even consider partnering with OFSAA to take advantage of “their history and their level of professionalism and things like that can support the OSBA and some of these other programs in doing things in a more above-board type of way.”
After all, the current prep-school format not only sees kids transfer schools on a whim to follow an AAU coach to a new program they might be starting, but it also has lacklustre academic requirements. In reality, many of these schools exist primarily for basketball purposes, with students only taking their core NCAA courses rather than doing everything they need to get into a Canadian University should things not work out with basketball.
Still, not all prep schools are the same. And Crestwood is proud to give athletes the traditional high school experience surrounded by 550 other students. “It feels like a regular high school,” Makeer says. “You go to school, hang out with your friends. And then after school, it’s just practice.”
But it isn’t with a typical high school coach. Davis began his Crestwood tenure teaching math and physical education but, now that he is on the phone with NCAA recruiters all day, he teaches study skills and coaches basketball. After winning four of the last five OSBA championships and sending 17 kids to Division I schools, Davis has built a reputation as one of the best coaches in the country. In fact, Canada Basketball snapped him up to coach its Under-18 team at the FIBA Women’s AmeriCup this summer, and it is only a matter of time before he receives offers to join an NCAA bench — something he will only consider if it helps him grow as a coach so that he can continue giving back to Canadian basketball down the line.
“Coach Marlo has done a lot for us this year,” Makeer says. “He’s definitely intense, for sure. But he definitely wants you to do the best you can so he’s gonna push you as hard as he can. And you’re gonna hate it at times, but in the end, it will be what you needed.”
“The overall thing about my coaching style is just it’s a confident space,” Davis says. “You play for me [and] I’m gonna force that into you… especially in girls basketball and women’s sports in general, I think confidence is something that is very, very important. Obviously, you saw the ESPN conversation with the girls and arguing in the Final Four last year and it was like: Well, why can’t girls be competitive and talk trash and when boys do it it’s cool?
“So, just creating a space for them to know that they can be who they want to be and be confident as people so when they do step away from basketball, that same confidence carries over.”
