Healthy Active Tahltans – Kendra Creyke

HEALTHY ACTIVE TAHLTANS

Kendra Nash

Kendra Nash’s life has revolved around sports since she can remember. Always a competitor with a do not quit attitude, nothing has stopped her from pursuing her passion, including three anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) tears and other setbacks. She found her true sport’s calling when she tried out for the Calgary women’s Rage American football team and has never looked back.

Kendra Nash is a twenty-five-year-old Tahltan women who is part of the Wolf Clan and Eth’eni family. She is the daughter of Tina Nash and Curtis May. Her Tahltan grandparents are Irene and John Creyke. She is one of eleven children, and she currently lives in Calgary, Alberta.

At four years old, Kendra started her sports journey by enrolling in soccer. She continued with the sport for seventeen years and competed for Calgary’s tier one team, the Calgary Villains. She travelled all over North America playing soccer in Las Vegas, San Diego, Chicago, and more. She also played volleyball, basketball, rugby, badminton, and ran track during high school while winning six awards for different sports and being named the athlete of the year in Grade 12. To ensure she was at the top of her game, she has always worked out at the gym and improved her cardio.

After graduation, Kendra played soccer and worked until 2018 when her mother brought home a flyer to try out for the Calgary Rage, a team in the Western Women’s Canadian Football League (WWFL). She did not know much about the sport, but she went to the tryouts where her coach asked if she liked to run or get hit and she replied, “run.” She was thrown in as a running back, fell in love with the sport, and has been playing ever since.

In her first season with the Rage, Kendra was named rookie of the year and in 2019, she made Team Alberta. Unfortunately, COVID-19 hit before she could compete at Provincials, so she focused on staying in shape and in 2022, the WWFL restarted in the spring where she was named the offensive player of the year and scored over twenty touchdowns. After the season, she flew to Ottawa to try out for the women’s Canadian football team and successfully made the team. There were 180 players trying out, including ten running backs, and only forty-five were selected for the roster. She travelled to Finland where she played against Great Britain, Australia, and Finland in the International Federation of American Football Women’s World Championship. She says it was an amazing experience where the talent was top tier.

Kendra has always been a competitor and loves playing team sports because of her teammates and the rush of getting the football. Her advice for others looking to lead a healthy lifestyle is to not be afraid of not having the knowledge to live healthily because there are many resources available.

Kendra continues to train hard to one day compete in the Women’s National Football Conference which is an American women’s football league. This healthy active Tahltan has overcome many challenges on her athletic journey and continues to make big impacts on the field.