Fust sisters help U of R Cougars get off to a flying start

The University of Regina Cougars have a dynamic sister duo to help them on the court this season.

Kyu and Izzi Fust are back on the U of R’s women’s basketball team after playing a year apart.

“It’s really nice (to have her here),” said Kyu, the older of the two. “It’s like a little piece of home, since we’re not from here, so it’s nice to be able to play with her on the court here.”

Both hail from Winnipeg, Manitoba and played high school basketball together at Dakota Collegiate.

After winning back-to-back provincial titles, Kyu elected to join the U of R last season.

“I wanted to try something new. I wanted to move away and see how I could do on my own, and I have a pretty good support system here with my team and now my sister, so it’s really nice,” Kyu said.

She went on to average 17 minutes per game and hauled in 79 rebounds in her rookie season last year.

Her sister playing in Regina was a big part of Izzi’s decision to come to Queen City.

“I always knew I kind of wanted to play with my sister, and it was just the fact that, like, the year away, I could really tell that it was different without her,” Izzi said. “This just seemed like the right fit.”

Leading Dakota Collegiate to a third provincial title, Izzi was one of the top-rated basketball prospects coming out of Manitoba in 2023.

“She was recruited across the country. Carleton, who’s a two-time defending champion, was recruiting her, TMU out of Toronto, Alberta, Saskatchewan — it was across the country. I had a lot of competition, so we were happy to get her,” said Cougars Head Coach Dave Taylor.

The Cougars also had to convince both sisters to leave their home province — a place where their parents had a lot of success.

Their mother Brooke (Bender) Fust played for five years with the University of Winnipeg and won a national bronze medal with the Wesmen in 2002. Their father Paul Fust was a five-year player at the University of Manitoba, earning a Great Plains Athletic Conference (GPAC) first-team all-star honours in 1999.

But both of them wanted to forge their own paths.

“I wanted to try something new. I wanted to move away and see how I could do on my own. I have a pretty good support system here with my team and now my sister, so it’s really nice,” Kyu said.

“I kind of always knew I wanted to move away from home just to be able to start fresh and there’s no reputations,” Izzi said. “I can just make myself a new person.

Izzy said it was a hard decision, “It was hard saying no to them (her coaches) because I have grown up with them and they’ve coached me on various teams.”

In her first season, Izzi has already averaged 27.8 minutes per game and 10.3 points per game — third-most on the team — and has the second-most rebounds per game on the team(7.9).

“I really appreciate how much, how much trust (Taylor) has in me and how much he pushes me,” Izzi said. “After every game we do film and he tells me where I could have done things better or where I could improve. It’s really nice to have that because in high school, we don’t have films as much, so you aren’t able to get that much feedback. So it’s very nice to be able to learn so much in such a short amount of time.”

That has helped the Cougars get out to a 7-1 record in Canada West this season.

“We’ve got high expectations and it’s just trying to figure out more how to make sure that we’re at our best every day,” Taylor said. “We sometimes are inconsistent. That seems to be what kind of bites us every year. So trying to work on that.”

The U of R Cougars are in action against the Cougars on Thursday in Mount Royal.