EDMONTON - The team captain peeled off her basketball kicks, slid her long-suffering feet into a soothing tub of ice and shared her wisdom about the stages of the journey the national women’s basketball team is navigating.

No one on the Pan Am Games gold medal-winning team is better situated for that task than Kim Gaucher, as Team Canada fine-tunes for the 10-team FIBA Americas Women’s Championship that runs from Aug. 9-16 at the Saville Centre, where a berth in the 2016 Summer Olympics is on offer to the champion.

“Kim has experienced it all,” head coach Lisa Thomaidis said at Tuesday’s Team Canada practice. “From a 16-year-old (in 2001) going to a World (Championship) qualifier, to an Olympian in London to a fifth-place finish at (2014) World’s, she’s been through everything.”

That includes low points, too, such as being on teams that failed to qualify for the 2004 and 2008 Summer Games. Gaucher, a continuous member of the national team since 2001, knows as well as any of her teammates, and better than most, how precious this opportunity is.

“The experience (and) leadership she brings ... is invaluable,” Thomaidis said. “We as coaches can relay some of that information, but when it comes from a teammate, it just means so much more.

“She’s been the cornerstone of this program for so long. To get to this point, we as a staff are so happy for her.”

Like the rest of her teammates, Gaucher has never experienced the thrill of playing an Olympic qualifying tournament at home, something that far outstrips the excitement of winning a gold medal at the Pan American Games.

“That didn’t actually feel hard,” Gaucher said, about the team collectively managing its emotions and not letting the Pan Am euphoria to get out of hand. “We kind of know what’s on the line here. We’ve been preparing for this and we were ready for it.

“They asked us after the tournament if we wanted to cut the nets down and we said, ‘No. We’re not done yet.’ This (Pan Am) isn’t what we’re playing for — it was a LOT of fun. We wanted to win gold, we wanted Canada to see what we can do. We wanted to send a message, in a way, to the other teams, as well.

“Like, ‘Hey, we’re good, we’re ready to play this summer. But this (FIBA Americas) is big. This tournament is what we want to win gold at.”

If they’re going to cut down a net, it will be on Aug. 16 after the FIBA Americas tournament final. So, after winning Pan Am gold, there were relatively brief celebrations, then some much-needed down time.

For the veteran guard from Mission, B.C., that meant a four-day visit to Ontario cottage country with her Toronto-based sister and other family members, followed by some down time in Connecticut, where her husband is from.

“I didn’t have any media or that kind of stuff, I was away from any distraction,” Gaucher said. “I was able to just wake up in the morning, work out, take a nap, work out. It was perfect.”

The team is back at its home base in Edmonton and back on task now.