In Helsinki’s crisp winter light, the gym at HBA-Marsky hums with the ordinary sounds of extraordinary ambition, squeaking soles, a metronomic bounce, the thud of a net accepting another made shot. In the middle of it all is Ada Luukkanen, a guard whose game blends pace, poise, and a mind that is always one step ahead. It’s an introduction as straightforward as her jump shot. But behind those lines sits a story of family legacy, stubborn resilience, and a love for sport that refuses to fade; no matter the pressure, the injuries, or the stage.

Roots: a ball, a family, a beginning

Basketball didn’t enter Ada’s life so much as it flowed through it. “Well, since I was a little kid I’ve always loved playing sports, especially ball games and well my dad was a basketball player so it kind of came from that so I started playing basketball in a team since I was seven years old I think. It's a team sport, and you have to work hard as a team to achieve every kind of success.”

She never saw her father compete. “He retired before I was born, so I haven’t seen him play.”

But the game, and his wisdom, were never far away. “Yeah, a lot of stories. He won like two Finnish championships in the Finnish men’s main league and played a couple of games in the men’s national team. He’s helped me a lot with basketball. Like, we practiced together and he has helped me to shoot the ball correctly and been a really big part of my process as a basketball player.”

It shows; the technical neatness in her release, the balance on drives and the quiet habit of doing hard things the right way. These are the fingerprints of hours spent learning, unlearning, and perfecting.

Why basketball? The fast thinking of a fast game

Ask Ada why this sport and her answer lands somewhere between instinct and intellect. “It’s hard to say. it’s just so fast and situations come fast. You have to think fast and react fast, you kind of have to be smart to be good at basketball. You have to have some kind of IQ, that’s something maybe that draws me into it.”

Speed for the body. Puzzles for the brain. Basketball, for Ada, is both.

Art of the possibilities

Like every young athlete, Ada’s imagination was fed by giants; some in her sport, some in another. “A lot of professional athletes of course that I look up to. I actually like also in football because I used to play football as well and I still love football and love watching it. In basketball and NBA, man, like Steph Curry. He’s huge, he’s such a great shooter, and in football I’ve always been a huge Messi fan. Within women’s basketball players like Caitlin Clark.”

First practices, first love

The specifics of early days still glow in her memory. “I remember my first practice in a real team. And it was exciting and I loved it right away. Obviously I was a bit nervous, but the practice went really well actually. I kind of picked up on it right away. When I started high school, I got invited to the Helsinki Basketball Academy where I play now, HBA-Marsky. So we play the women’s league in Finland.”

There were medals and moments, sweet and sharp. “We reached the final during my last year under 16 team. We came up short, we got silver and it hurt because it was my last year, but also really memorable that we were able to get silver.”

At HBA-Marsky, the learning curve steepened, and so did her resolve. “This is my third, because I started when I went to high school there.”

That first leap to Finland’s highest women’s level came with turbulence. “I couldn’t play for the first half. I had some injuries first, but it was really overwhelming. I was kind of anxious, really nervous before the first game; pretty much everybody was older than me. But when I got to the flow of the game. I enjoyed it. Then the first season, the half season that I was able to play, went quite well.”

Wearing the Finland jersey

The national-team jersey changes everything and nothing: the court is the same size; the heart feels twice as big. Her first European Championship with Finland’s under 16 team was unforgettable for reasons both glorious and grim. “Again so nervous before the first game and it was obviously very cool. It kind of felt surreal to be in actual European championships and I actually got to play only three games in that tournament because I got coronavirus, three of our players got corona and I was one of them. The first game didn’t go really well for me but the second game I kind of got into my rhythm and the third game went all right. I was super excited to go to the round of 16 game. We had Spain against us, but then I got sick and I was out of the rest of the tournament. So that was a shame.”

A year later, everything felt different. “It was a lot different. Now it was my own age group, so I had more confidence. I had made a lot of progress during the year. And we had a better team, higher expectations. It was amazing, we got to the final four, we got the fourth place but we still made history for Finland. It was an amazing feeling when we; reached the top five, which meant we would get to go to Mexico for the World Cup. We won by one point. It was a thriller game and it was nerve-wracking. But when the buzzer went off; full euphoria and it was amazing.”

Then came a summer that whispered something new about Finland’s future, and Ada’s role in it. In the under 18, a semifinal against Belgium became a showcase in persistence. “What can I say, it felt amazing. It’s always an honor to put on a Finland jersey and represent your country and even more when you’re at that big of a stage. And it was a hard game; such a high level, we didn’t really know much of them and I also had a really tough time shooting the basketball in the previous five games of the tournament. I kept telling myself that now it’s the big games, it doesn’t matter, just keep shooting. And luckily the ball went in in the semi-final. It was a huge effort from the whole team. We were losing, most of the game before the third quarter but we just kept doing our thing. We worked on the defensive end and we got rewarded.”

The final against Spain, in Spain, was the kind of stage most players dream of. “Yeah, it was huge. Obviously it’s really rare opportunity to play. The final but also play against the home crowd. I loved it, there were so many people watching. Even though most of them weren’t cheering for us it was just an amazing atmosphere to play in, just to take it all in, was great.”