“In 28 years, she’s the best all-around player I’ve seen. I don’t say that lightly,” Woodward athletic director and basketball coach Bob Giordano was quoted as saying in the article.
Not only is Leung firing up the basketball court, but she is scoring academically, too, with a 3.9 GPA – not bad for a teenager who once considered quitting school in Hong Kong.
“I was a bad student because my parents divorced when I was very little,” she says on a video call from Quincy. After her parents split up, her mother worked long hours, making it hard for her to keep tabs on Leung and her older sister.
She was nine years old when her fifth-grade teacher at S.K.H. St Andrew’s Primary School, in Cheung Sha Wan in Hong Kong’s Kowloon district, showed the class a video of the school’s basketball team, and Leung was immediately hooked.
“It looked so cool,” she recalls. She went to the after-school try-outs the same day and joined the team.
How seed of Olympic ambition was sown in Siobhan Haughey, Hong Kong athlete
How seed of Olympic ambition was sown in Siobhan Haughey, Hong Kong athlete
“Every day after school I went to the street court to play basketball with my friends until the lights went out at 11pm,” says Leung, adding that she lost her academic focus and would fall asleep in class.
One day in 2020, she and a friend jumped a fence to sneak into a closed public basketball court in Lai Chi Kok, but they were caught by the police and fined HK$5,000 (US$640) each.
“I didn’t tell my mum. I just thought I would find a job and work as a waitress to pay off the bill because I didn’t want to argue with her and put more pressure on her,” says Leung. “After I paid the fine, I thought it was easier to take care of myself by working so I wanted to quit school and become a waitress full time.”
The gym, run by William Lo Wing-kwan, is the first in Hong Kong to focus on basketball. Lo also cross-trains Olympic athletes on balance and conditioning. He could see Leung’s potential even at 13.
“At the time, she ran with a little bit of a limp,” says Lo. “I’m not sure if it was growing pains or it was a slight injury, but she ran a little bit funny. But then I saw her shoot the ball. I was like, ‘OK, this girl can definitely play.’”
When she told him about growing up in a single-parent household and being fined for sneaking into a basketball court, Lo says he thought of her as “a tough girl who had to raise herself”.
I didn’t have any goals. I didn’t know what I wanted to do, because at that point, people around me were all doing the same thing as me. I didn’t think of my future
Nicole Leung Wai-laam, basketball player
“I asked her, ‘Who would I go and talk to about your future?’ And she said, ‘me’, without batting an eye,” he says. “She was the decision maker because there wasn’t a whole lot of support.”
When Lo asked Leung if she wanted to play on the Gold Team and in the US, she said yes. He asked to see her report card and was not surprised by what he saw: a 35 per cent average.
If she wanted to be on the Gold Team, he said, she would need to improve her grades. Leung immediately went to her teacher to ask for tutoring. And, Lo says, “from there, she made huge strides in her grades and she kept becoming a better basketball player”.
“Hanging out every day on the street court, I didn’t have any goals,” recalls Leung. “I didn’t know what I wanted to do, because at that point, people around me were all doing the same thing as me. I didn’t think of my future.”
Although Lo is good at spotting and nurturing basketball talent, he does not have the funds to send players to the US. That is where his wife, Angela Wong On-ying, comes in.
Wong is a member of the Zonta Club of Hong Kong II, a charity aimed at empowering women and girls. The group sponsors the Gold Team in terms of training and travel to play in southern China, but when it comes to Leung’s tuition fees in the US, Wong turns to her family, particularly her parents, and friends for help.
“My father never went to university,” says Wong, “so for him to be able to support girls to enable them to go to university is very meaningful […] I think that resonated with a lot of people in Hong Kong, of how to help the next generation, and how education is everything.”
Together with Lo and Wong, she spent two weeks checking out eight prep schools in the eastern United States.
Wong remembers that even though Leung had practised speaking English, she was painfully shy and practically mute, then “suddenly something happened on the sixth day”.
“We joke now about the fact that because she loves talking so much, having to be quiet for six days was so hard. But suddenly, something turned and ‘blah blah blah’ all in English,” says Wong.
“She’s still much cheekier in Cantonese, but she’s learning to have her personality come out in English.”
Nevertheless, Leung was accepted by The Woodward School, a private girls’ school about 15km south of Boston. Because Leung is an underage student, the school arranged for her to stay with former headmaster Walter Hubley and his wife, Kathryn.
“They are a godsend,” says Lo. “They are the most loving, nurturing, caring people […] They just love Nicole like a daughter.”
Which is fortunate, because “a lot of schools passed on her because they weren’t sure of her English. And they weren’t sure how a Hong Kong local school education would transfer into an elite prep school, and some schools don’t provide English as a second language”.
Leung says the Hubleys are open to different cultures, and take her to Asian supermarkets and restaurants, where she can get hotpot, her favourite.
The first few months after she arrived, Leung picked up English quickly, watching shows on Netflix.
Once, “an old man walked into this Chinese restaurant, and he looked around, and I just started talking to him”, says Leung. “I went like, ‘There’s a lot of people here today, there aren’t usually this many people.’ And then he’s like, ‘Oh, yeah?’ and I said, ‘This is one of my favourite spots, I really love the rice noodles here.’
“We just talked, got to know each other and I found out that he’s the owner of that restaurant.”
Last year, Chan was named 2023 Great Northeast Athletic Conference Women’s Basketball Player of the Year in a vote by the league’s 13 head coaches.
Chan also worked hard on her English, having realised how important it was to speak the language when playing basketball.
“Communication is the biggest part of playing sports here. So if you’re not able to talk to a teammate, it’s very hard […] Body language can help, but you gotta talk,” she says on the video call, seated next to Leung.
Chan has a 3.94 GPA despite having had a whirlwind year travelling to Germany to train with professional club Alba Berlin and representing Hong Kong in the Asian Games in Hangzhou, eastern China, where the team scored its first win when they beat Kazakhstan 70-56.
“When we were walking back to the locker room, the head coach said, ‘I’m so glad you played so well today,’ and I was crying,” says Chan. “That was such a cool moment, to prove that we actually have the ability to compete at this [international] level.”
Chan also got to shoot hoops with former NBA player Tracy McGrady near Hangzhou, and was thrilled to get an autographed basketball and ask him how he managed the ups and downs of his career.
“He told me there are no downs because I probably worked so hard to get to where I am at right now [McGrady had watched her highlight clips], so I just have to enjoy it and stay consistent and keep putting in the work.
“I know I have a good support system, like my family, coach Will and Angela are always here. I have friends, but sometimes being far away from home, handling all these things by myself, figuring out tax, financial stuff or insurance can be stressful. But I think it’s like a process of being more mature, like an adult.”
Sports psychology has played a big role in mentally preparing Chan for games, so much so that she decided to minor in psychology while majoring in sports management.
“Back home, I feel like the culture is more about being realistic but also they don’t trust that dreams will come true if you are consistent, if you keep putting in the work, if you actually believe in yourself,” says Chan.
“And I feel like here, learning the power of trusting myself and also believing in someone else, that they can do it, is such a big power.”
“The amazing part is,” says Wong, “especially for Yannie, a lot of younger kids from Hong Kong, Asian-Americans will look for her on Instagram and say, ‘I look up to you, the fact that you could do this, I’m going to work really hard.’”
Over Christmas, she and Lo met up with Leung and Chan in New York, where they all spent the holidays together.
“It’s really amazing to see their transformation,” says Lo, “mainly with their confidence because I feel like they now have stepped out of their comfort zone and they know they can make it. And their ability to blend in with the culture, it was really cool.
“And to see them grow as people, within months, is rewarding. To also see their basketball skills develop without me being there is really cool.”
A lot of people don’t try out simply because they don’t feel like they’re good enough, which is a shame – trying out never hurts, right?
William Lo Wing-kwan, basketball coach
“Every girl that we send there, I feel like I can’t screw it up for them and their family,” says Wong. “So I need to make sure that they’re mentally strong and mature, but also that they know when to ask for help.”
Wong works full time but manages to squeeze in quick video chats with Chan and Leung if an urgent issue arises. They are also part of a WhatsApp group.
Conversations range from questions about what they should wear for a school interview to how to fill out applications for funding or how to analyse how an interview went or venting frustrations over an injury.
Leung’s smooth moves on the court have landed her a full scholarship at Mercersburg Academy, an elite prep school in Pennsylvania. She will start there in August. In the same month, Chan will be heading to Iona University in New Rochelle, New York, on a full scholarship to play in Division 1. She will be the first Hong Kong-schooled girl to go to Division 1.
Meanwhile, with Lo’s plans to send three more girls from the Gold Team to the US this year, more parents are taking their young daughters to Strive Fitness.
“A lot of parents contact me and say, ‘We’ve known about you guys for a long time. But we’ve just been too nervous to reach out,’” says Lo. “When we help a player, we go very deep. But a lot of people don’t try out simply because they don’t feel like they’re good enough, which is a shame – trying out never hurts, right?”
Each time Chan comes back to Hong Kong, she returns to Strive Fitness and plays basketball with these rookies.
“I remember the first time she came back, especially to the younger girls that have only seen her on YouTube or whatever, it is like, ‘Yannie Chan is coming home and she’s playing against me’ and they’re in awe,” says Wong.
“She gives them encouraging words, she’s an icon to them. She’s always giving back, and she’s amazing. And the fact that she does this, the other girls know that they need to do this in the future, too – give back to your community.”