By Keiran Gorsky
Jahda Denis was sitting in the back seat of coach Fabienne Blizzard’s Dodge Grand Caravan. For the second consecutive season, their Capital Courts Academy had had their hopes quashed by their arch-nemesis at Crestwood Prep, this time by a humiliating 94-55 scoreline in the Ontario Scholarship Basketball Association championship game.
But Denis had an epiphany, even as the season had sputtered to a bitter end.
“‘We need some dogs,’” Denis recalls telling Blizzard in the car. “‘We need some people that are not scared of attacking the rim [and] not scared of anything great.’”
She didn’t think much of it at the time, even as Blizzard nodded along approvingly. When Denis returned for practice this season, she was surprised to see her sentiment plastered on custom-made t-shirts printed over the off-season. “DAWG MENTALITY” was bolded in big impact font on the front.
It was only natural that the dynamic point guard’s contagious competitive spirit would become Capital Courts’ theme of the 2025 season en route to a perfect 15-0 record and their second ever OSBA championship.
Denis’s last season with the Cairine Wilson Secondary School-based CCA is coming to a close, having committed to join Saint Louis University’s NCAA Division I women’s basketball team for their 2025-26 campaign.
It’s been a long journey for Denis, originally introduced to Blizzard as a shy young woman from Laval who hardly spoke a word of English. Richard Denis, her father, had become aware of Capital Courts, having seen their highlight clips posted on social media.
After an interview and introductory presentation, where her competitive drive was immediately obvious, Blizzard was sold. Denis made the big move away from home for the beginning of Grade 9.
She turned out to be an exceptionally quick learner. After all of six months of tutoring, she was functionally bilingual and suddenly very talkative. It became clear that her instinctive competitiveness didn’t stop at the buzzer.
“She cannot be in an environment where she’s not competing for everything,” Blizzard highlights.
Blizzard’s practice sessions aren’t all business all the time. Whether it was a totally made-up icebreaker at the beginning or a game of dodgeball at the end, though, Denis always had to come out on top.
“I’m a sore loser,” Denis proudly proclaims.
Blizzard loves having a player like her. But it isn’t so easy being constantly dialled to the max. On some occasions, Denis feels that she can be a little harsh with teammates. At other times, the sting of losing might rob her of some of her formative cherished memories as a young athlete.
In 2024, Denis was part of Canada’s women’s basketball team that made their first-ever trek to the finals of the U17 FIBA Women’s World Cup, with Blizzard at the helm and CCA teammate Rachael Okokoh also wearing the maple leaf.
It was an especially remarkable run given that the entire Canadian team was fighting food poisoning for large parts of it. Guess who managed to dodge it?
“Every single teammate had food poisoning, except for me,” Denis recounts. “So they were just dead all day or getting medicine every two seconds, and I was just like, ‘Guys, what are we doing next?’”
Denis provided some much needed width to Canada’s offence. She had a particularly strong showing in the quarter-finals where she shot a perfect 4/4 against Finland from behind the three-point arc.
The historic run didn’t do much to lift Canadian spirits when they were swept aside 84-64 by the United States in the final. Coach Blizzard recalls the whole team being dead silent on the bus ride after the game. Maybe it’s a problem inherent to all high achievers at a certain age. There’s no sunshine when the pinnacle is just out of reach.
On the other hand, Denis’s competitiveness precludes her from disengaging even when she’s forced off the court. She didn’t get to participate in last year’s ill-fated postseason, having torn her meniscus in practice. But she still managed to seize the reins from the sidelines as a self-appointed member of the coaching staff. Blizzard recalls Denis always roaring in her ear.
“She was like, ‘Coach! You need to [call] time out! Coach! Coach!’ And I’m like, ‘Sit down!’” Blizzard recalls, laughing.
To friends and teammates, Denis can seem like a different person in and out of competition. Off the court, that visceral fierceness gives way. Teammate Patricia Augustin, who is also from the Montreal area, has known Denis since before Capital Courts and has been training with her in preparation for her own NCAA commitment to Virginia Commonwealth University.
“She might seem like someone with a hard personality,” Augustin notes, shortly after returning from a 5 km run with Denis. “But she’s pretty cool, she’s funny, she’s outgoing. She’s competitive for sure, but she has that, like, sensitive side to her.”
When she is in that special state of mind, though, teammates and coaches seem to get it.
“It comes from love,” Blizzard says of Denis’s competitiveness.
Denis is one of eight graduating CCA players this spring, with half of a dozen of them set to head south – Georgia Ferguson (University of Evansville), Alex-Anne Bessette (Loyola) and local products Megan Hollingsworth (Pittsburgh) and Okokoh (Penn State) are the others.
Read More: Capital Courts Academy joins Carleton, Algonquin with perfect women’s basketball regular seasons
Denis chose to become a Saint Louis Billiken in hopes of competing as quickly as possible. The coaching staff at SLU provided her with a plausible path to backcourt playing time so long as she puts the work in. Denis will hope to help the Billikens to a second appearance at March Madness after they bowed out in the first round of the tournament in 2023.
Denis’s dawg mentality, though, endures at Capital Courts Academy. Incoming point guards have a gargantuan hole to fill. Blizzard says that next generation is taking after her attacking senses, her dynamism, her relentless defence – her sheer competitiveness.
“They’re doing the Jadha thing,” Blizzard underlines.
Read More of our 2025 High School Best Series as we tip our caps to top local student-athletes at: OttawaSportsPages.ca/Ottawa-High-School-Best-2025