Nirra Fields finds home on basketball court

Racing up and down the basketball court, Nirra Fields is at home – it’s her place of solace.

It’s been there to give her a place to escape the struggles of living in a family with a single mother who could not always provide for her seven children in the suburbs of Montreal, Quebec.

It gave the UCLA women’s basketball sophomore guard a way out of the hardships and the opportunity to leave her situation in search of a better life in the United States.

At the age of 15, Fields left everything she had known – her mom, her six brothers and her home – but brought along the one other constant in her life: basketball.

Off a scholarship offer to play high school basketball in the United States, Fields relocated about 600 miles to Cleveland, Ohio, where she faced the stronger basketball competition she craved for that she found lacking in Canada.

Fields left behind the life of constant struggles filled with financial hardships. In its place rose a different challenge. She had to figure out her way through life all by herself.

Fields’ journey spanned three different high schools in three different states before she finally settled down at UCLA. Through everything, she still holds no regrets in jumping out of the familiarity of her home in chase of her basketball dreams.

“If I could leave and show everyone else that lived in Montreal how much hard work does pay off, if I could just create that path, they can follow in the same footsteps and do something with their lives instead of just being sucked in by all the hardship and all the poverty they’ve been through,” Fields said.

***

While her mother, Faith Fields, was always busy working, her six brothers grew up on sports. So it made sense that Nirra Fields followed right along in their footsteps.

“When I was growing up, I really just tried to emulate my brothers,” Nirra Fields said. “I had to learn how to be tough in order to keep up with them through sports and just being around them.”

As Fields grew older and focused more on basketball, her home away from home became the court at DJ Sports Club, a nonprofit charitable organization that housed the Amateur Athletic Union team Fields played on.

There, she had access to a gym to work out on weekends, develop her skills with coaches and play pickup games with her brothers.

When she wasn’t at the gym, Fields spent most of her time with her brothers, who she called her role models and protectors.

In the fifth or sixth grade, Fields watched as her mother was evicted from their apartment. She felt that her mom didn’t want her children living in a foster home; instead, Faith Fields sent them to live with her three oldest sons.

It was one of the darkest times Nirra Fields remembers going through. She couldn’t see her mom until the weekends. When she did, Fields couldn’t bear the sight of her mom staying in such a terrible place.

***

It was March Madness in Montreal’s YMCA co-ed rec league. In the finals, despite exploding for more than 50 points, Fields’ team lost by two.

Sitting beside the proud and cheering Faith Fields was Romeo Augustine, who ran a workout facility in Canada and tried to give the best players an opportunity to play in the United States.

Nirra Fields’ performance caught his eye, and he ended up talking to her mother in the stands. After the game, he approached the 15-year-old Fields about a scholarship to play basketball in the U.S.

“That was always my dream. I just needed the opportunity to get here,” Fields said.

With the offer on the table, Fields had no hesitation; she wanted to go to the United States. Her mom, on the other hand, had more pause.

As a child, Faith Fields had dreams of becoming a singer, but her foster parents always told her “no.”

Now, she still wonders how her life would have been different, a question she doesn’t want her children to have to dwell on.

“With my kids, I always said if there’s something that they seem passionate about, I need to be the first one behind it,” Fields said. “If you don’t try, then you can’t get out from the hole you’re in.”

She knew she had to let her only daughter go chase after her dream.

“Are you sure you can go as far as you can?” Fields asked her daughter. “You have to go all the way, because if you come back, there’s really not too much here, so if you go and you have a door opening, I just want you to be strong enough to finish it to the end.”

But mom already knew the answer; she had seen Nirra Fields endure through all the struggles of coming out of a home with not enough.

At the end of the school year, Faith Fields gave in, and they began preparing for Nirra Fields’ move to a new home.

***

Faith and Nirra Fields packed up a car with everything Nirra Fields would need. She said goodbye to her brothers, and the two drove about 10 hours from Montreal to Cleveland.

She was told that she would go to Regina High School, an all-girls Catholic school, and live with one of her new teammates.

After a tearful goodbye, Fields was fully on her own. Brand-new city, brand-new school, brand-new life.

When problems inevitably came up, she didn’t have someone by her side to talk to and tell her what to do. Fields had to make every decision by herself.

“Being that young and having to make those decisions was pretty hard because either way, I had to deal with the consequences,” Fields said. “There wasn’t really anyone to steer me in the right direction, so I had to learn from mistakes.”

Mistakes were common, but soon her relationship with the teammate she lived with grew testy.

Her teammate had been a star on the team, but after Fields came in, the two shared the spotlight. Fields felt that her teammate didn’t like that Fields was garnering all the attention.

“I knew that wasn’t going to work, and her mother felt the same way,” Fields said. “At that point, I knew that it wasn’t the best situation and I just had to get out.”

With nowhere to go, Fields called a Cleveland AAU coach who had considered taking in Fields when she first moved to Cleveland. Michael Duncan heard the story and accepted her into his house, especially after learning Fields was living in the basement of her teammate’s home.

Soon, their relationship blossomed into what both described as one of father and daughter.

It was easy because Fields wasn’t a typical teenage girl. She’d do her homework, study and then it was just basketball. In the mornings, she’d ride her bike to the basketball court and was always the only girl on the court.

“She’s not interested in going out, not interested in partying,” Duncan said. “All she wanted to do was play basketball.”

If Fields needed a phone bill paid for, Duncan paid for it. If she needed food, clothes or school supplies, Duncan was always there for her.

“He was just like a father figure,” Fields said. “He helped me really grow up and helped me make choices that were the best for me, and he always had my best interest at heart.”

When a lack of funding closed down Regina High after Fields’ sophomore year, it was Duncan who made a few calls to the right people to enroll her at Oak Hill Academy in Virginia.

Despite the school’s basketball pedigree, Fields didn’t enjoy her time at Oak Hill Academy. So it was Duncan who once again helped Fields find a different door to open.

On Thanksgiving, one of Duncan’s best friends invited Fields to his house for dinner. That friend just so happened to be NBA coach Mike Brown, who had been fired by the Cleveland Cavaliers.

“I met the family, I met their two sons,” Fields said. “Me and Ms. Brown just clicked the first day we met each other. I was sort of the daughter she never had.”

The two kept in contact throughout her junior year at Oak Hill Academy, and Fields spent most her summer vacation with the Brown family.

Opportunity struck when Mike Brown was hired as the Los Angeles Lakers coach. The Browns asked Fields if she wanted to come live with them.

So she made the jump across the country to Los Angeles and the No. 1 team in the nation, Mater Dei High School.

Her senior season, Fields led Mater Dei to a state championship and was awarded several statewide Player of the Year accolades.

With the help of Brown, she narrowed her college choices down to just five: Miami, Louisville, Kentucky, Oklahoma and UCLA.

The morning before signing day, Fields picked up the phone and called coach Cori Close. She had decided on UCLA.

***

When Fields first stepped onto the UCLA campus, she was accustomed to jumping around all over the country, never learning how to form relationships.

Without the guidance from her mother as Fields matured through her teenage years, there were holes in the ways she dealt with conflict.

“When I was growing up, I would just run away from all my problems instead of fixing them,” Fields said. “It followed me in the future, and I wasn’t able to learn how to develop relationships which were long lasting, meaningful and strong.”

So when Close tried to connect with the steady-faced Fields, Close found a girl who constructed a wall around herself and would only show one thing: her passion for basketball.

“At first, Nirra’s a hard nut to crack. She’s not going to let you in, she’s not going to give up information,” Close said, “You wouldn’t know if she was having the happiest day of her life or the saddest day of her life judging by her face.”

One day during her freshman year, Fields asked Close if she would teach her how to drive. They borrowed a teammate’s car, and the two drove around the bottom corner of an empty UCLA parking lot.

Close recalled working primarily on parking, and during that impromptu lesson, Fields began to let down the wall around her.

“It’s been a gradual process, but it’s been very fun watching her relationships with her teammates grow,” Close said. “Nirra’s one of those who takes a long time to earn her trust but once you have it, you have it, and she’ll be loyal forever.”

Fields admitted that having someone like Close or her teammates constantly around has helped her get through life and make the decisions she previously had to make alone.

She’s now taken on a leadership role as a starter in her second year on the team. After UCLA, Fields’ sights are set on the WNBA and then a career in broadcasting or coaching in college.

But despite all the success and future goals, Fields still remembers her roots, where she first started playing the game she loves.

Last winter break, when she went back home to Montreal, the very first thing Fields did was take three of her brothers down to DJ Sports Club, the gym where she first began playing basketball.

“That was home for her. It’s like she’s relaxed again because that’s where she came from,” Faith Fields said. “That’s where she started from, and she’s happy.”

Through all the places her journey has taken her, the one constant in her life is the basketball court, the one place where all the hardships fade into the background.

On the court, Fields can be just a regular girl with a basketball – a basketball and a dream.