Kentucky redshirt sophomore Dominika Paurova was a five-time Czech Republic national swimming champion and also speaks four languages. (UK Athletics Photo)
Dominika Paurová describes herself as a “dynamic player” and that’s why Kentucky coach Kenny Brooks was so happy to add her to his first roster at UK last season.
The Czech Republic native played in 35 games at Oregon State during the 2023024 season and averaged 5.5 points, 2.1 rebounds, 1.4 assists and 16.4 minutes per game for an Elite Eight team. She shot 48 percent from the field and 37 percent from 3.
The 6-foot-1 guard missed last season after injuring her knee playing with her national team against Iceland in Bulgaria last summer. She needed surgery and did not get to Lexington until mid-August in 2024 and spent last season rehabbing her knee.
Now she’s healthy and ready to help offset the loss of All-American guard Georgia Amoore and shooting guard Dazia Lawrence off last year’s team that finished fourth in the SEC and won one NCAA Tournament game.
“I like to play hard on defense and offense. I can drive to the basket. This past year I had a lot of time to work on my footwork and shooting technique,” Paurova said. “I can play multiple positions, but I like playing as a guard the most.”
Both of her parents played basketball. Her dad, Martin Paur, played professionally in a Czech league while her mom played just for fun “but loves basketball” as much as anyone.
“I have been in the gym since I was in diapers. I had my small basketball. Once we grew up a little bit my parents made me and my sister costume jerseys. That was really cool and I still have that jersey,” Paurova said. “While I was in the gym all the time, my parents didn’t want to force basketball on us so I did every other sport possible. It was around third grade when I started playing and I played with boys at first and then my parents actually started coaching.”
Her “other” sports included swimming, skiing, competitive water rescue, volleyball, windsurfing, track and field, and tennis.
She swam in elementary school and was a five-time Czech national champion.
“My parents taught me to swim when I was 2 years old. In first grade we went to swimming classes with my school and the coach was surprised I could already swim and asked if I wanted to join the team. I joined and did both swimming and basketball for quite a while,” the UK redshirt sophomore said. “I still like to swim but I like basketball more.”
She placed third in the Czech nationals in skiing in 2016. She said her parents put her on skis at the top of the hill and told her to go.
“We skied like 30 days each winter until I got more serious with basketball,” Paurova said. “There was a competition with like 10 qualification windows and I qualified for nationals and ended up third, which made me kind of mad that I didn’t win. I tried agin the next year but unfortunately had an accident. I really liked skiing.”
In competitive water rescue, she was a national champion. She grew a bit weary of swimming from one end of the pool to the other and back when she decided to join the competitive water rescue team.
“You had to reduce this plastic person and swim under obstacles and stuff like that. That was more entertaining for me and I really enjoyed it,” Paurova said. “I played soccer for a little bit because my cousins played. I surfed when we traveled. I danced. I can snowboard. But honestly, tennis, cycling, rollerblading … pretty much anything you can think of, I tried because we are a sports family. I have even recently tried pickleball.”
If that’s not enough, she not only speaks Czech and English but is also fluent in Russian. She’s currently learning Spanish.
“I started learning English in third grade but learning English in school was not ideal. So in sixth grade, my mom sent me to England by myself for two weeks. Just put me on a plane and sent me off. I was going to school Monday through Friday each morning and then had other activities,” the UK player said. “I rode horses there, so I can do that too. I learned to speak English and lost the fear of speaking English.”
The following year, her parents sent her to Malta for three weeks by herself.
“That was way different because I was way more independent there. I lived in a hotel with other students as a seventh-grader. We traveled the island on the bus,” she laughed and said.
Paurova played on the Czech Republic U14, U15, U18, U19 and U20 teams between 2018 and 2023. On the U18 team, she was considered a most valuable player candidate at the FIBA European Championship in 2022, averaging 14.7 points and 9.3 rebounds per game at the tournament. She came to the U.S. for her high school senior year and helped DME Academy in Florida to the Sunshine Independent Athletic Association State Championship by averaging 11.5 points, 5.0 rebounds and 2.2 steals per game.
She has a family group chat and still depends on her mother for her morning wake-up call.
“l am scared my alarm won’t go off, so the night before in our chat I tell my mum what time I want to wake up and thanks to the time change (her mother is six hours ahead time-wise) she wakes me up,” Paurova said.
She goes home each summer to visit and takes her family a special gift that has nothing to do with basketball.
“We have no plastic cups, no plastic straws. Everything is paper. It’s super annoying,” Paurova said. “When I go home every summer I bring like two packs of plastic straws for my family and they really appreciate me doing that.”
