A Muslim athlete needs modest sportswear. Now you sell it to others.

Kindra Brown had no great interest in the religion that grew up in a multicultural Montreal. But she had a curious mind. “If you know Kanandra, then you know that she is wondering about everything,” said her mother, Sherrill White, a love of love.

When the Coronaf virus was succeeded, Mrs. Brown, who was in high school that had a lot of time to think, began to think about the issue of faith. Soon she was overcoming a Muslim friend with questions about Islam. While Mrs. Brown, who eventually turned into Islam, was peeling the back pages of the Qur’an, she found that many of the messages resonated with her, especially with regard to basketball aspirations.

The required structure and discipline – stopping to pray five times every day, fasting during the holy month of Ramadan – repeat the required commitment from the elite athletes. The concept of brotherhood and the ridicule of the ego reflects the fabric of the sport of the team.

“As a person who had already had a very disciplined lifestyle, Islam was logical,” she said.

But as Mrs. Brown, she is deeper in religion, she was presented with a struggle: the uniform of women’s basketball, with her shorts and tank peaks, did not comply with the most stringent Islamic standards. But revealing her body is less by wearing the veil-head scarf-along with loose pants and long-sleeved shirts presented her mystery on the basketball field.

She said, “You feel like you are wearing a garbage bag.”

Mrs. Brown managed to do this, first at Indiana University, where her university career began, then at the University of Docisen in Pittsburg, where she was a striker to start playing in the Atlantic 10 championship on Thursday. But she wondered why there was no more clothes options for Muslim women who have a passion for sports-which is less complicated than XXL sportswear and more expensive than $ 100 clothes.

In the end, Mrs. Brown has reached a solution: a commercial work that sells modest sports corrosion at reasonable prices, which she gets from a small family company in Pakistan.

It is, at least now, a very small company. There is no website. It takes orders through direct messages on Instagram. It sells about ten clothes per month. The small size is necessary for a person who follows a master’s degree in business management, playing basketball and working as a personal coach.

“It is difficult to develop a company in the college,” said Ms. Brown. “It is not from 9 to 5.”

Nevertheless, it was useful that it was explained in abundance, as there is a global market for women who prefer not to exercise in sports bras and dress that embrace the skin. Mrs. Brown is scheduled to graduate in May and as soon as the school is completed, she plans to search for an investor to expand her business.

Not so long ago, Mrs. Brown had been banned from this project, but NCAA, the governing body of university athletics, was forced in 2021 through state laws to allow athletes to profit from using their name, image and similarity. Before last season, NCAA followed other athletics management bodies in the restrictions that require athletes to submit an application to waive to wear religious head fashion, provided that they are safe to compete.

However, wearing the veil is not permitted in some circles.

France, which hosted the Paris Olympics last summer, banned its athletes, which are considered by civil service employees, saying that it violates the law of secularism that prevents civilian employees from wearing public religious symbols while performing their duties. Similar restrictions apply to Ms. Braun’s main province of teachers, police officers and other civil service staff.

Only a handful of university athletes play with the veil. Mrs. Brown is one of the three Muslim players on the Dukeni team, but she is the only one to wear the veil. Earlier this season, Mrs. Brown and Yasmine Deberl, a student at Kansius University, were believed to be the first basketball players in the college to compete against each other wearing the veil.

“Frankly, it is not about the number of sales he made, it is really related to all the messages I receive on social media and the people who thank me,” said Braun. “It removes a barrier on women who want to work, but they cannot find what they need to wear because they wear a temperature, feel uncomfortable or very complicated.”

Ms. Brown said that she believed that covering her body with loose clothes was a form of empowerment of females that led men to appreciate her mind, talent and personality. She said: “Women are incredibly subject to the subject and sexual.” “My veil does not allow anyone to do it.”

Last month, a group of Muslim girls in Chicago, which was issued by Mrs. Brown at a clinic last summer, came to watch her team. After a modern home match, Ibtihal Badawi, who was wearing the veil, brought her 14 -year -old daughter, to meet Mrs. Brown, who was signing signatures with her teammates. Soon, Mrs. Badawi said, her daughter will decide whether she wants to wear the veil.

Ms. Badawi, a runner -up away from the distance that established Pittsburgh, a community organization that encourages communications by making art. “Not everyone has the courage to do what they want. At the Academy Awards ceremony or a big event, you don’t see many women cover up. People do not want to stand out.”

Mrs. Brown understands that as well. Sometimes, the opponent is grabbed on her head, which covers or mocked the fan to wear. She said that she had been warned by friends and family when she entered the transport portal that some coaches might look at her veil as an unwanted distraction, but the Duqiesne coach, Dan Bert, indicated his interest in asking her about the head covers that the equipment manager must store.

When Mr. Bert learned after a match on the road this season that one of the fans of the opposing team mocked Mrs. Brown, he appealed to her not to keep her herself. “If this happens again, I will stop the game,” he says.

The first time she was exposed in Indiana by an opposition player.

“I was really shocked at the moment,” said Braun. “It is clear that people are not stupid. They are trying to make you think about things other than the task. Now you choose and have the opportunity to choose if you are to allow them to cause the harm they were meant or move forward and play your game.”

Her parents saw her from afar, with some fear, and also with a great deal of pride as they saw that their older daughter was growing. (Another daughter, Serena, is a water -watery Polo player who represented Canada in the Paris Olympics.)

Mrs. White said that her older daughter has always embraced her being different. Her father, Ken Brown, appreciates her commitment. A former football player at the college, fasting during Ramadan, narrated in a display of solidarity with his teammate at the University of Colorado, Rashan Salam, who won the Haysman Prize.

Mr. Brown said: “I lost 15 lbs, which is not great for an offensive line, but he strengthened me in ways that I never imagined.” “What Kanandra does is not easy. Do not look at her as a regular basketball player and oh, by the way, she is a Muslim. Fortunately or unfortunately, men do not have that.”