Early life and family

Nurse is the eldest of three children born to Michelle and Roger Nurse. Her father and his family immigrated to Canada from Trinidad in 1970, when he was a child. Sarah Nurse was raised in Hamilton, Ontario, where she learned to ice skate at age three and began playing hockey two years later. In 2002, when she was seven years old, Nurse watched the Canadian women’s ice hockey team, led by Hayley Wickenheiser, win gold at the Salt Lake City Winter Games and told her family that she would play in the Olympics one day.

Another source of inspiration for Nurse were the numerous accomplished athletes in her family tree. Her father was a national-level lacrosse player and then a middle-school teacher and coach; her uncle Richard Nurse was a wide receiver for the Hamilton Tiger-Cats, a professional Canadian football team, and is married to Cathy Doucette Nurse, who was a star basketball player at McMaster University; and her aunt Raquel-Ann (“Roxi”) Nurse McNabb was a point guard on Syracuse University’s women’s basketball team and is married to former Philadelphia Eagles quarterback Donovan McNabb. Moreover, Sarah Nurse’s cousins include Kia Nurse, a WNBA All-Star and three-time Olympian, and Darnell Nurse, a defenseman for the Edmonton Oilers.

Amateur and college career

In 2004 Nurse began playing organized hockey on a youth team in the Hamilton City Hub League. Later she developed into a promising athlete on the Stoney Creek Junior Sabres of the Provincial Women’s Hockey League, leading that league in goals during the 2012–13 season.

Nurse elected to play college ice hockey at the University of Wisconsin. She led the Badgers to the NCAA Frozen Four (the hockey equivalent of March Madness’s Final Four) four years in a row (2014–17) and helped the team win three consecutive Western Collegiate Hockey Association (WCHA) championships (2015–17). In addition, she was named to the All-WCHA Rookie Team her freshman year. She graduated in 2018 with a degree in business administration.

Canadian national teams

Nurse has also played for Canada’s national ice hockey teams. She made her first international appearance with Team Canada at the 2013 International Ice Hockey Federation (IIHF) U18 (Under-18) Women’s World Championship, helping the squad secure the gold medal. Two years later she was a member of the U22 National Women’s Development Team, which won the gold medal at the Nations Cup. Also in 2015 she made her debut with the main national team, which took the silver medal at the Four Nations Cup. Nurse was also on the teams that captured silvers at the Four Nations Cups in 2017 and 2018.

Nurse rejoined the Canadian Olympic squad at the 2022 Winter Games in Beijing. Among her starring performances were a hat trick (scoring three goals) in a 11–1 defeat of Finland in a preliminary round and a goal and an assist in the gold medal final 3–2 victory over the United States. Nurse’s run, during which she broke the single-Olympics points record and became the first Black woman to win an ice hockey gold medal, was all the more remarkable because she had suffered a knee injury leading up to the competition and had been unable to practice with the team until less than two months before it began.

Professional career

Concurrent with her national team career, Nurse has also participated in professional ice hockey. After graduating from Wisconsin in 2018, she was drafted second overall by the Toronto Furies of the Canadian Women’s Hockey League (CWHL). In her debut season (2018–19), she earned 26 points (14 goals and 12 assists) over 26 games. However, the CWHL—which did not pay players full-time salaries—collapsed at the end of the season because of a lack of funds. Nurse then joined with other players to form the nonprofit Professional Women’s Hockey Player’s Association (PWHPA) to protest the lack of adequate pay and other working conditions in existing leagues and to advocate for the creation of a viable, economically secure future for the sport.

Over the next several years, Nurse competed with other prominent hockey players in PWHPA-organized exhibition tournaments in Canada and the United States to build support for the establishment of a new professional league. That goal was realized in 2023, when the PWHL was formed. Nurse was a founding member of the PWHL Players’ Association and a key voice in the negotiation process with the new league, which led to a collective bargaining agreement ensuring adequate pay and benefits for players.

Nurse was among the first 18 players to sign to the league, inking a three-year contract with the Toronto Sceptres. During the inaugural season, held January–May 2024, she played in all 24 regular season games and accumulated 23 points (11 goals and 12 assists). Her production dipped to 14 points (6 goals and 8 assists) in the second season, held November 2024–May 2025. In the offseason Nurse was signed by the new PWHL team in Vancouver that will join the league in the 2025–26 season.

Advocacy and other ventures

In addition to her work organizing and promoting women’s ice hockey, Nurse has been a vocal advocate for diversity, equity, and inclusion in the sport. These efforts include initiating a program to mentor young Black female ice hockey players. In 2020 Mattel, Inc., released a limited-edition Barbie doll in her likeness, and all proceeds were donated to a nonprofit that advocates for girls’ participation in youth hockey.

Nurse has also become a prominent public figure through her appearance in advertisements and endorsement deals. In 2022 she became the first woman to be featured on the cover of an EA Sports hockey video game, NHL 23.