Gabrielle Schwabe, daughter of CBC host Markus Schwabe, landed her “dream job” when she was invited to hitch the staff of NBA team the Toronto Raptors in the summertime of 2022.
Now, at 24, Schwabe becomes one in every of just three women employed in team operations-equipment within the NBA.
Her job is to make sure the players and coaches have every thing they should be successful, from headbands to basketball shoes. She also runs the clock in the course of the team’s practices.
Schwabe, a graduate of Laurentian University’s Sports Administration (SPAD) program, travels with the team, hauling the uniforms and kit which she lays out within the locker rooms on the road.
Morning North9:20Sudbury’s Gabrielle Schwabe landed her dream job working for the Toronto Raptors
Last summer, Sudbury’s Gabrielle Schwabe began working as team operations specialist with the Toronto Raptors basketball team. She spoke about how she’s living the dream as she wraps up her first season in the brand new job.
“It is often been a dream of mine to work for the Toronto Raptors, nevertheless it’s more of one in every of those dreams that you simply don’t actually think is ever going to come back true,” Schwabe said.
“Truthfully, each day I still pinch myself,” she said. “Once we get on a plane, I’m like, ‘Oh my gosh, what am I doing? We’re flying like, on this crazy plane. And here’s little old me traveling with an NBA team to a different city.”
Schwabe said she grew up a Raptors fan, devoutly watching players like José Calderón and Andrea Bargnani on television, including their epic 2019 playoff run and eventual championship.
After spending a yr as Canada Basketball’s coordinator of girls’s basketball operations, Schwabe threw her hat into the ring when a position opened up with Major League Sports Entertainment (MLSE), the corporate that owns each the Raptors and the NHL’s Toronto Maple Leafs.
She didn’t expect to land the job, but after several zoom calls and in-person meetings with Raptors executives, Schwabe received a fateful phone call from the team’s vp of operations.
“The best way she began the decision off, I sort of thought she was letting me down because she was thanking me for on a regular basis and for being patient,” Schwabe said. “So my heart sort of sunk…Then she said ‘we’d like to have you ever on board.”
“All the pieces from that time on was only a blur,” she said. “Only a blur of emotion.”
Schwabe had two weeks to pack her bags and make it to Los Angeles to hitch the team as they readied for the 2022/23 season. There, she said, walking amongst athletes she had watched on the screen, she became a bit of star struck.
“These are the those that you’ve got been idolizing the past 15 years of your life and also you’re in a room with them,” she said. “You are impacting their lives and what they do.”
“It was just rather a lot. It’s crazy.”
She also met others on the operations side, including Paul Elliott, who cut his teeth within the equipment world years ago when the Raptors were a fledgling expansion team.
“Initially I believed it is perhaps tough for Gabrielle because the luggage are [heavy],” Elliott said. “But now, I seen the guns on her and the way she’s improved in the burden room and he or she appears to be throwing those bags around without incident.”
“She’s really come a good distance,” Elliot said. “We’re happy with her.”
Curtis Andrande, the Raptors’ head of apparatus, said Schwabe’s also been capable of adapt to the league’s rigourous lifestyle.
“It is not like a 9-to-5 job,” Andre said. “We do not clock in at nine knowing that we’re out at five. We clock in knowing that we want to get this, this and this done.”
“And you understand, she’s done a terrific job in understanding that…working day and night to make certain that the operation runs as easily.”
Only a blur of emotion.– Gabrielle Schwabe, on working with the Toronto Raptors
As for Schwabe, she said she is not taking the chance without any consideration. She doesn’t take calmly that although the job is a “grind,” working with the Raptors remains to be the stuff that dreams are manufactured from.
“There are still some times after I get a bit of shell shocked,” she said.
“When [former Raptors all-star] DeMar DeRozan walked back on this laundry room, I freaked out a bit of bit inside because he was my favourite player growing up,” Schwabe said.
“For where I’m at at once in life, I believe it’s the proper job for me,” she said. “I really adore it. I sleep at night loving my job. I get up within the morning loving my job and every thing in between.”
“I just feel really fortunate to be where I’m at.”
Click here to hearken to Markus Schwabe’s full documentary about his daughter’s journey to the NBA.