Homecoming for Fust

It was Christmas break of 2024 when Kyu Fust found herself in a familiar setting, wrestling with an unfamiliar feeling.

Fust, who was Manitoba’s top-ranked high school women’s basketball recruit in 2023, had returned home to play in the annual Wesmen Classic at the University of Winnipeg’s Duckworth Centre. While sitting in the stands, it fully sank in that she no longer loved the game.

The feeling had been percolating for a while during her second year at the University of Regina, as she grew unhappy with her fit within the Cougars program, and her enjoyment on the court began to fade.

Fust tried working with mental performance coach Jon Giesbrecht in the second semester, but that didn’t move the needle. After the season, she distanced herself from coaches and several teammates and hardly touched a basketball or stepped on the court.

In her mind, she was never playing again.

“I was over it and took a long break from it,” Fust told the Free Press Thursday.

That was until she returned home again earlier this summer and was asked to help coach a Prairie Elite Basketball League team with former Winnipeg teammates and coaches. It was there that her sense of joy was renewed.

“I kind of was brought back into that environment with people that I’ve known before and who are here now. So that kind of motivated me to want to continue to play and just brought the fun back into it,” she said.

Not only was it enough to re-ignite her desire to play, but it kept her from leaving home again. On Wednesday, it was announced that Fust had transferred from Regina and will suit up for the University of Manitoba Bisons this fall.

The six-foot forward won back-to-back AAAA varsity provincial championships and MVP honours in 2022 and 2023 with the Dakota Lancers, and was named the Manitoba High Schools Athletic Association’s Female Athlete of the Year in 2023.

Fust was lauded for her defence and ability to finish at the rim in high school. She is a welcome spark for a Bisons program that is searching for its first playoff win in four years this season.

“She’s pretty easy to plug and play,” said Bisons head coach Michele Sung. “It’s just been fun to kind of experiment with different things, and ask her to go try something, and she just goes and does it, which is pretty rare. Like we say, her physical literacy is very high.”

Though she drew interest from other programs out of high school, choosing to transfer to Manitoba was an easy decision for Fust when considering the support system that was already in place. She joins former Lancers teammates Darya Rom, Hope Larocque and top 2025 recruit Taylor Schepp. There is also plenty of familiarity between Fust and Sung, whose husband Eric coached Fust at Dakota.

Fust’s roots also run deep at Manitoba. Her dad, Paul, played five years for the men’s basketball team, earning GPAC First Team All-Star honours in 1999, while her grandfather suited up for the football team. Her mom, Brooke, played for the Winnipeg Wesmen’s women’s basketball team for five seasons, winning a national bronze medal in 2002.

“It’s really exciting that also the community that helped build her and develop her into the basketball player that she is, for those people to get to see her play night in, night out, at home, I think is — is really valuable, too,” said Sung.

“I think overall, just for the basketball community to have her back is awesome, and it’s really cool just to have her family to be part of our program now.”

Fust’s decision to leave the Cougars came after considering one significant person: her younger sister, Izzi, who followed her to Regina and now enters her second year with the program. The Fust sisters were a lethal tandem for years at Dakota and figured to be once again in university.

Though difficult, both understood this move was for the best.

“There was thought to it. I definitely wondered how she would feel about it, but I’ve had discussions with her, and I think she’s pretty good with that,” Fust said. “She knew it was a hard year for me, too, so it just wasn’t a good place and somewhere that I could go back to and be okay as a person, if that makes sense.

“She understood it, and we still talk to each other lots over the phone and stuff, so we’re good. I think she’s doing really well out there now.”

The Bisons begin pre-season action in Kelowna next week and open the regular season in Brandon against the Bobcats on Oct. 24.

joshua.frey-sam@freepress.mb.ca

X: @jfreysam