Lady Griz Orientation :: Dominique Nesland

She starts this story as Dominique, her given name, the formal and full one that's fitting for first-time introductions, though she goes by Dom, at her request, once you get to know her, once that first wall is broken down, three syllables becoming one, a symbol of welcoming, a signal that you've been invited in.

And that's the goal with all these Lady Griz Orientation articles, isn't it? To take a name, a face from a photo shoot during an official visit and put a story to it, to make a player a person, to bring this maybe unknown entity to life, to take a Dominique and make her a Dom.

Because this is the start of a shared journey, between you and her, you and Montana's nine newcomers – Nine? Okay, we've got some work to do over the coming months – that unique connection between Lady Griz fans and those who wear the Montana jersey.

That's part of the reason she is here, because she was inside Dahlberg Arena with nearly 3,000 of you on that mid-November Sunday afternoon in 2021 when Montana hosted Gonzaga, had the Bulldogs in a two-possession game late in the fourth quarter, experienced what it's like when 3,000 become one.

She was a sophomore at the time, at Xavier College Prep in Phoenix, and she knew two things: that she had never experienced anything quite like that at a women's basketball game and that she wanted to be a part of it. "I'd never seen anything like it. The energy was crazy," she recalls.

It just took longer than she originally wanted to get here, leaving campus that weekend without the offer she so badly desired to take home with her, to mull over even though she already knew what she wanted, then already zeroing in on High Point by the time Montana thought it was time to get serious.

What she also saw that day were two Gonzaga guards, the Truong sisters, 5-foot-9, just like Nesland, their games – distribute first, score when needed – a lot like Nesland's today, pass first, shoot second, own those forgotten and overlooked spaces of the mid-range, a McKenzie Johnston type for a new era.

"She's a combination of old-school John Stockton and Jason Kidd," says her dad, Brett, who played collegiately and briefly professionally before he took that competitive mindset to the financial world. "She always had a natural instinct to know where everybody was. Point guard was a natural fit."

That's a good start to her story, but she's still Dominque, not yet Dom. There are still syllables to strip away to get from player to person, something we can only do by digging deeper, going back a number of decades, finding that basketball didn't start with her or her dad. They were simply inheritors.

She was born in Seattle, lived for a time in Austin, Texas, before the family set up a permanent home in Phoenix, trading in frequent bouts of Cedar Fever for the heat of central Arizona.

All of which is a long way from Mobridge, that small village of a few thousand in central South Dakota, where Larry Virgil Nesland, Brett's dad, was born and raised before moving east to play basketball for Bob Wachs at Northern State in Aberdeen.

Along the way he married into coaching royalty, Rita Greeno's brothers in more coaching halls of fame across the Dakotas than you have fingers, the couple breaking from the family norm and heading west, to McMinnville, Oregon, where he would teach and coach and point his kids to the world of sports.

"We'd play basketball until our parents told us to come in because the neighbors were complaining," says Brett. "We'd play in the rain, in the snow. You'd have your buddies over. That's just what you did."

When Larry passed away in 2008 at the too-early age of 66, his obituary gave anyone who read it some early insight into a granddaughter who was just beginning her own basketball journey. "For him, there was no secret to success. It came after much practice and hard work."

It would be a generational thing, passed down like a gift, both hereditary and taught, modeled by those elder to those younger.

Eighteen years later, Montana women's basketball coach Nate Harris was asked about Nesland and what sets her apart. "How much she cares and how much she's driven to be the best," he said.

"She does all the extra things, treatment, individual workouts, shooting, lifting, conditioning. There is not an extra thing out there that Dom doesn't do. Working as hard as possible and doing all the extra stuff is not the norm but it is the norm for her."

There is a story Brett reveals about his father, how when Brett was five, his dad was helping friends pick cherries when a tree broke and fell on him, paralyzing him from the neck down, his days of walking the hallways at school, pacing up and down the sidelines at practice now over.

At least that's what he was told. He wasn't having it. "He had perseverance beyond anything imaginable and was so positive," Brett says. "He was able to walk again, able to coach. He became an avid golfer." But gone before his granddaughter brought those traits to a new generation.

"Unfortunately, he passed away before he was able to see Dominique play. He would have loved watching her."

If that removes one of the syllables we're trying to get past, Brett can get us the rest of the way, fully from Dominique to Dom, his own story taking him to UC Davis to play basketball, then to Hawaii-Hilo, finally overseas to Cyprus for three months, paid to play that sport he grew to love in his driveway.

Teams in Norway wanted him, same with teams in Sweden, but you try going from living in Hawaii to the prospect of dark, cold winters in Scandinavia. He pulled up anchor and returned to the U.S. with his business management degree and that Nesland mindset: work ethic + competitiveness = success.

He spent 15 years in investment banking in the corporate world before starting his own company as a financier. In a nutshell: "We finance small- to mid-size companies and take them to public markets in a traditional IPO."

And that scratches that particular itch? "It's a lot like sports. There is a scorecard and I'm somewhat competitive. Everything moves fast. If it doesn't work, you lose money. It if works, you win and make a lot of money. That's why I like it."

In at least one case – regarding the particulars of how he met his wife – he'll have to settle for a draw. He's got his story of how they met in that Seattle gym, Sarah, who played basketball and volleyball at Washington before adding one year of rowing just because, will stick to hers.

Anyway, somebody saw somebody at a drinking fountain and couldn't take their eyes off them. "I have my recollections of those events and my wife has hers," Brett says diplomatically. "She thought I was cute and went and talked to me. That's my story. Her story would probably be the opposite."

And, yikes: "She is the most competitive in the family." And now we're getting from Dominique to Dom, their first of two daughters, born in Seattle before Lexi, her own short version of Lexington, came along in Austin, where they discovered they were no match for Cedar Fever, which is as awful as it sounds.

Brett would travel to California for business, would go back to feeling 100 percent, then return to Austin, only for the local juniper trees to send him to the hospital time and time again and have Dominique crashing like she'd just played five travel-ball basketball games in a single day.

Phoenix it would be. No such thing as Cactus Fever. Right? Please?

Brett was a good enough tennis player in high school that he could have played collegiately, so he has nothing against individual sports, but there would be a family rule that was non-negotiable. Their kids would play at least one team sport.

"Call it a family belief, that a team sport is like real life," he says. "You have goals, you have adversity, you have groups of people you have to get along with. There might be people you don't like and you have to learn how to work with those people.

"There are so many things that are relatable to the real world when you become an adult."

Basketball is why we're here but that doesn't mean we can't sprinkle in a few non-team-sport stories, like when Dominique first started swimming, how she would go to meets and compete in surf shorts and surf shirts, which brought out the worst from the Scottsdale parents whose kids were in sleek Speedos.

"We'd bite our tongue," says Brett, then he and Sarah would watch Dominique, the only one who didn't bother to wear a swim cap, dust everyone, touching the wall first over and over again.

That was something a sports dad could understand. You, me, let's go, first one to the finish line wins. Equestrian? Dressage, the discipline that probably mostly mirrors figure skating, where competitors are judged and scored based on how rider and horse perform a routine? Let's just say he didn't care for it.

Finally, she got hit with the right kind of fever, the basketball strain, and she's never been able to shake it, which was a good thing for Xavier College Prep, then High Point and will soon be for Montana.

"We expect her to have an impact on our program, on the court and off," said Harris. "We expect her to be a leader and somebody who sets the tone with how hard she works. She'll be someone who leaves the program better than she found it."

That's what she and her teammates at Xavier College Prep did, the school's only sport without a state championship, the team whose coach began every season with a challenge: Will you be the ones that finally get it done?

Freshman: Loss to Valley Vista in the Class 6A state semifinals
Sophomore: Loss to Perry in the Class 6A state semifinals
Junior: Loss to Desert Vista and Jerzy Robinson in the Open semifinals

In 2023-24, with Nesland a senior and with five starters who are all now playing college basketball, the Gators went 26-4 and lost only once to another Arizona team, earned a top-20 national ranking and defeated Desert Vista in the Open championship game.

Down late, Desert Vista kept fouling Nesland and Nesland kept making free throws, eight straight, and Xavier College Prep finally had a girls' basketball trophy to add to the case.

After three years of heartbreak, finally, jubilation. "After going through the devastation, winning senior year was amazing," says Nesland, who finished her high school career with a record of 78-20.

"The kid's a winner," says Harris. "She's never not won. Wherever she's been, she's been part of winning programs."

Her dad played college basketball, but his recruitment didn't begin until he was a senior in high school. One generation later, his daughter was given her first offer when she was still in middle school.

As she kept getting better, as more and more college coaches saw her play, the interest kept growing, more than two dozen offers before the family decided to shut things down and make a decision from the offers she held.

"It got overwhelming for her," says Brett. "It was getting to the point where she was spending too much time on the phone with these college coaches. We slowed things down toward the end and decided to not take any more calls."

Like so many high schoolers, the idea of getting away from home, far away from Phoenix, was intriguing for Nesland, who was recruited early on by Southern Utah assistant coach Katie Gruys (now Clayman), who would move on to High Point, where she told HPU head coach Chelsea Banbury about Nesland.

Not long after, the Panthers called and offered. On the list of pros and cons for the schools she was considering, High Point, located in North Carolina, won out.

Looking at the numbers, you might think it was dreamy: 11 points on 4-of-5 shooting and six assists in her second-ever collegiate game, which had her starting against Davidson three days later, when she scored a season-high 15 points.

High Point would win 21 games and make the NCAA Tournament. Nesland made the Big South All-Freshman team and was a two-time Big South Freshman of the Week.

As a sophomore: High Point would go 27-6, again make the NCAA Tournament and Nesland would average 6.0 points and 4.9 rebounds per game while getting nine starts.

Even though she missed three games, her 146 rebounds were only 21 off the team lead, as a 5-foot-9 guard. She had 14 rebounds against Radford, a dozen against Charleston Southern.

"She's a heck of a rebounder," said Brett. "Here is what I taught her: Rebounding is just heart and effort. When you're a point guard and you're rebounding, it makes your fast break so much better. You don't have to wait for the outlet pass.

"Get her in transition and have three or four people running with her and it's game over."

And there's the rub. Nesland played off the ball at High Point, a natural point guard out of position, not just her preferred spot but the one she thought was her best to add value to a team. She was winning, again, but she wasn't fulfilled or satisfied.

"I didn't get to play my position. That's not who I am. I'm a point guard. I like to make the players around me better," she said. "I'm good at breaking down defenders, coming off pick-and-rolls and getting the ball out in transition. Passing is one of my biggest strengths, handling the ball, being calm."

After the season, she set up a meeting with Banbury to discuss her role, her future. The day before their meeting, Banbury announced to the team that she was going to be named the next coach at Virginia Commonwealth.

Nesland met with new High Point coach Wyatt Foust before she did anything. "He was a great guy but I just needed to start new someplace else," she said. She hit the transfer portal, had a 60-minute phone call with Harris and his staff at 7 a.m. and knew again what she wanted back then.

"I think a lot of it was just having a more consistent role," said Harris. "She played a lot (at High Point) and had numbers and did some good things but wanting to feel like she was one of the impact players was something that was important to her."

The Nesland family – Brett, Sarah, who is a VP at Nokia, Dominique and Lexi, who is seven years younger than her sister and a better shooter at 13 if not quite the all-around player, yet – goes to Hawaii each summer, where Brett joyously reunites with former teammates and roommates from now decades ago.

They are relationships that have lasted, that have withstood the test of time. People may move on, to new jobs, to new cities, but the ties, if they are strong enough, never sever. That's how good it can be.

"That's what (Dominique) wanted and didn't feel that she was going to get that at High Point," says Brett. "She wanted relationships with people that would be long-lasting. She wants a community. High Point is kind of walled off from the outside world. She wanted more of a college environment.

"And she wanted a really good relationship with her coaches, more personal," and few do that part of it better than Harris, who operates like he has a welcome mat permanently at his feet, pointing toward everyone else, always approachable, always open.

Now, finally, we can say it: Dom Nesland has found a perfect landing spot for her second act.

"I'm super excited about this opportunity I get to have. With me and the other transfers coming in, we've come from winning programs. We know what it's like to win," she said.

"I'm excited to lead this team. I want to be the point guard. I want to be the floor general. I'm ready to take it on."

Before there was a transfer portal, Brett Nesland hopped from school to school before he found what he was looking for. He knows what's most important is where you finish, once you've found the right spot, more so than where you start.

"She is ecstatic to be there, I'll tell you that," he said. "She is so happy. I haven't seen her this happy in a while. It's going to be good for her and good for Montana."

University of Montana Athletics

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