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<\/p>\nWith spring in full swing, many are hopeful for the sun to keep shining. But for basketball fans in Kingston, Ont., the Sun they\u2019re looking for is in Connecticut.<\/p>\n
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Limestone City native Aaliyah Edwards<\/a> is getting set for her third season of professional basketball, her first full season with the Connecticut Sun<\/a> of the WNBA.<\/p>\n The former Frontenac Secondary School standout was moved to the Sun before the trade deadline, after being seldom used by the team that drafted her sixth overall in 2024.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s tough stuff that I had to go through that,\u201d Edwards said from her hotel room in Toronto, where she is getting set to take on the Toronto Tempo in pre-season action.<\/p>\n \u201cBut at the same time, I\u2019m grateful that I went through it so early on in my career.\u201d<\/p>\n Story continues below advertisement<\/p>\n She adds that league veterans have encouraged her to keep her head up, as trades and team movement are far too common in professional sports.<\/p>\n But Edwards says she\u2019s not dwelling on her turbulent sophomore season and is instead using it as motivation to keep progressing as a professional basketball player.<\/p>\n \u201cI want my name to be thrown around the league, and I want to prove people wrong,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n \u201cGoing to my third year, obviously, I\u2019m going to be team first. But individually, I\u2019ve been working really hard to kind of get back to what I do best, which is just to dominate.\u201d<\/p>\n During her rookie season with the Mystics in 2024, Edwards averaged 7.6 points and 5.6 rebounds in 21.8 minutes per game. But her production dipped in 2025, averaging 5.4 points and 3.7 rebounds per game. However, that came in an average of seven fewer minutes per outing.<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t \t\t\t\t\tGet breaking National news<\/p>\n Get breaking Canada news delivered to your inbox as it happens so you won’t miss a trending story.<\/p>\n Heading into this season, Edwards says she\u2019s been told by Sun management and coaches that she\u2019ll be an integral part of the team in 2026.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m really excited and just embracing that role and embracing just having that responsibility and accountability,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n Part of the reason she\u2019s caught the eyes of the Sun brass is her outstanding showing during Unrivalled, the off-season 3-on-3 league, where Edwards averaged a double-double.<\/p>\n Story continues below advertisement<\/p>\n \u201cI was able to really show that and just perform and it really just gave me that, that joy of the sport again, after having such a tough season with a lot of adversity thrown my way.\u201d<\/p>\n And although Edwards will be more heavily relied upon in 2026, she is hoping to use the season to be a mentee to league veteran, Britney Griner, who signed with Connecticut in the off-season. Griner is a 3-time Olympic Gold Medalist, as well as a former NCAA and WNBA champion.<\/p>\n The addition to the Sun caught her off-guard, but she\u2019s excited at the opportunity to learn from one of the best to ever play in the WNBA.<\/p>\n \u201cTo kind of like pick her brain and to utilize her to help me be a better player is going to be great for me this summer,\u201d Edwards said, before joking that it will be nice not to play against her.<\/p>\n \u201cShe to this day is one of the toughest people I\u2019ve had to guard, just with her size and her mobility at six-eight, like that\u2019s really unheard of in this league. So to have her on our side of the team wearing our jersey, we love to see it.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\t\t\tMore on Sports Earlier this off-season, the WNBA announced the sale of the Sun to a group from Houston, who will relocate the long-standing club to the Lone Star State. It\u2019s bittersweet for Edwards, as last season\u2019s trade was a homecoming of sorts after spending her four years in the NCAA with the University of Connecticut Huskies.<\/p>\n Story continues below advertisement<\/p>\n While she admits it will be tough to leave her second home again, she\u2019s excited for the opportunity to be part of the league\u2019s return to the city that won the first four WNBA titles back-to-back from 1997 to 2000.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s going to be great for us to relocate there. A lot of old fans are going to come out and support us, but we\u2019re also going to get a lot of new fans,\u201d Edwards said.<\/p>\n \u201cThat\u2019s a great mix for me because, you know, you\u2019re not only paving the way for the next generation, but you\u2019re also respecting those that came before us.\u201d<\/p>\n But before she gets a new postal code, Edwards has to focus on this season and the Sun\u2019s first exhibition game \u2014 a game that happens to be her first professional game on home soil when Connecticut pays a visit to Coca-Cola Coliseum in Toronto against the expansion Tempo.<\/p>\n \u201cIsn\u2019t that crazy?\u201d she remarked.<\/p>\n Edwards admits her phone has been busy ever since the league\u2019s schedule was announced, with many friends and family reaching out in hopes of securing tickets to the game. She\u2019s exhausted the number of tickets allotted to her by the league, and says that close relatives and former coaches will be in attendance for the exhibition matchup.<\/p>\n But the fact that tickets for the game are so hard to come by shows how far the league has come.<\/p>\n Story continues below advertisement<\/p>\n \u201cYou know, they\u2019re not only playing games in Toronto, they\u2019re playing in Vancouver. And Montreal, so they\u2019re going across the country. So yeah, I\u2019m just super proud that it\u2019s finally come.<\/p>\n \u201cLittle girls can look up and see a pro team playing on their home soil. It\u2019s even more of a motivator for them to continue to do that and play the sport that they love.\u201d<\/p>\n Edwards and the Sun will return to Toronto on June 10th, for Connecticut\u2019s only other visit to Canada this season.<\/p>\n \n\t\t© 2026 Global News, a division of Corus Entertainment Inc.\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"With spring in full swing, many are hopeful for the sun to keep shining. But for basketball fans…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":637261,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[629],"tags":[9001,49,48,3458,44,82,45963,630],"class_list":["post-637260","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wnba","tag-aaliyah-edwards","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-connecticut-sun","tag-news","tag-sports","tag-toronto-tempo","tag-wnba"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/637260","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=637260"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/637260\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/637261"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=637260"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=637260"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=637260"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Get](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/1767930311_275_national.jpg\")
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