After probability to be a Tokyo Olympian was misplaced, Katie Lou Samuelson returns to chase Paris 2024

MIAMI LAKES, Fla. — Katie Lou Samuelson and Devin Cannady took their marriage vows in April. They made one other vow to one another lengthy earlier than that.

An Olympic vow.

It was July 2021 through the Tokyo Olympics, when Samuelson’s staff received a gold medal – with out her. Samuelson examined constructive for COVID-19 proper earlier than the ladies’s 3×3 basketball staff was leaving for Japan, denying her the prospect to compete and develop into an Olympian.

Samuelson was in her household’s Southern California dwelling as that competitors ended, distraught over not with the ability to play and needing to get replaced on that roster. Cannady, her boyfriend on the time who couldn’t even hug her due to the precautions vital after she examined constructive, requested her a easy query: Does she need to go to Paris in 2024?

She mentioned sure. Cannady promised he’d be together with her for each step of that journey. And right here they’re, set to compete primarily side-by-side on the FIBA 3×3 AmeriCup that began Thursday in San Juan, Puerto Rico. The Americans open play on Saturday, Cannady a part of the lads’s squad, Samuelson a part of the ladies’s staff – and their 4-month-old daughter might be there as nicely.

“I have some unfinished business,” Samuelson mentioned after a training-camp observe in South Florida this week. “I clearly wanted to be a part of the Tokyo Olympics and I was about 24 hours away from getting there. So, it was kind of important for me to give myself just the opportunity to be in the mix and I needed to play in something in order to be in that mix. That really pushed me this last month to get back to where I need to be.”

The U.S. has already certified for the Paris Games in all 4 basketball disciplines – males’s, ladies’s, males’s 3×3 and ladies’s 3×3. It received gold medals in Tokyo in males’s, ladies’s and ladies’s 3×3; it didn’t qualify for the lads’s 3×3 occasion there.

No gamers have been formally picked for any of these groups. Samuelson could be very a lot within the ladies’s 3×3 combine for subsequent summer season, and Cannady has hopes as nicely for the lads’s 3×3 sport.

“Just to be in this moment and going to Puerto Rico, playing AmeriCup, it’s not Paris yet but this is part of that journey,” mentioned Cannady, who’s taking part in within the G League and has made 13 NBA appearances with Orlando. “I’m hungry. I know she’s hungry. We’re as a family, we’re here. It’s part of the process. I don’t know what July or August looks like with Team USA, but this is part of those vows we had and that’s why we’re really doing this.”

Samuelson was actually a day away from leaving Las Vegas for Tokyo when the official phrase got here that she was out. She wakened with a scratchy throat, took a speedy take a look at and was destructive after which took a extra invasive take a look at. It, too, was destructive. Then got here a constructive, then one other destructive, then extra positives and it grew to become clear that she was not going to play with Kelsey Plum, Stefanie Dolson and Allisha Gray. Jackie Young took Samuelson‘s place.

“Heartbreaking,” Dolson said at the time.

Samuelson spent four days in quarantine in her Las Vegas hotel room – another vow she has since taken was never to return to that hotel – before her father brought her a car so she could drive home. She drove alone for fear that she’d make anybody else sick.

“One of the lowest points of my life,” Samuelson mentioned. “For those 14 days, I couldn’t even get a hug.”

Samuelson was a star participant at UConn, profitable a nationwide championship, two American Athletic Conference participant of the yr awards and being a three-time All-American choice throughout her time there. She was the No. 4 choose within the 2019 WNBA draft and has been with 4 groups in her 4 seasons in that league, lacking this yr due to the beginning of her daughter.

She has been the director of participant improvement for Vanderbilt ladies’s basketball for a couple of yr, and now could be again on the ground for the primary time since changing into a mother – with an eye fixed on Paris, sure, but additionally making an attempt to make sure that she’s remaining within the second.

“It could be one day away and taken away,” Samuelson mentioned. “I was so close to Tokyo and I didn’t even get to go there. So now, I just want to be ready for this tournament and then go to the next step. And there’s still a lot more steps that need to happen before Paris. There’s a lot of things that can happen in my life, in Devin‘s life, that could change the trajectory. I think we both have seen that in this past year. We have that goal. That is a big goal. But the first step for me is getting back on the court.”