Ask Emoni Bush to trace the origins of her unique given name, and the senior volleyball standout with Campbell River’s Carihi Tyees delivers her answer with an appropriate hint of joyous wonder.“What I’ve heard is that it came to my dad in a dream,” says Bush.Trace the journey she has made in the sport over […]
Feature
Our 12th annual edition: Who are B.C.’s Top 15 Grade 12 boys volleyball players? Check out our 2020-21 Dream Team!
It’s Year No. 12 for the Varsity Letters’ B.C. boys Super 15 senior boys volleyball player rankings.Once again, our sincere thanks go out to the head coaches of four B.C. men’s Canada West volleyball programs who cast their votes from a pool of this province’s top graduating Grade 12 talent.COVID-19’s appearance on the scene could […]
He makes time stand still! Vernon Christian’s Liam Remple, B.C. boys volleyball 2020-21 Player of the Year, brings gift of flight to TWU Spartans
Liam Remple has inhaled the rare air of his sport enough times to have gained a critical appreciation of how sweet the view can be almost 12 feet off the ground.“It’s pretty crazy up there, I’m not going to lie” laughed Remple, the high-flying 6-foot-7 Vernon Christian volleyball star during a phone interview earlier this […]
VL Podcast 12.17.20 edition: Richmond Colts’ Ron Putzi on milking cows and making buckets over an extraordinary hoops life!
RICHMOND — He was the leading man on a high school basketball dynasty which ushered in a new era of mainstream popularity for B.C. boys high school basketball. Former Richmond Colts star Ron Putzi stops by to join host Howard Tsumura on this week’s Varsity Letters’ podcast. Tsumura covered Putzi’s high school exploits just as […]
Vancouver College’s Jackson Findlay never rests: BCSSFA honours the big-picture focus of Fighting Irish senior!
VANCOUVER — You’d be hard pressed to find a B.C. high school student-athlete who started the current academic year in September more prepared to stretch the limits of a standard 24-hour day than Jackson Findlay.And even though the restrictions imposed by the COVID-19 pandemic have curtailed so many of the goals he had set for […]
A Sunday Read: In 1958, UBC hosted the greatest group of NBA talent in B.C. history! Here’s how 15 future Hall of Famers hit the parquet at War Memorial Gym!
VANCOUVER — Cloudy, sunny periods, scattered showers, and a chance of … a lifetime.Excuse my indulgences today as I supplement the weather forecast of a certain spring day here almost 63 years ago because through the gift of hindsight, it all seems especially apropos.April 21, 1958.That’s the day on which perhaps the most amazing collection […]
The singular focus of Ben Kolb: VC Fighting Irish’s UBC-bound kicker wears his ‘thinking cap’ inside his helmet as BCHSF’s 2020 Academic Player of Year!
VANCOUVER — Whether he’s wearing a football helmet or just his plain, old thinking cap, Ben Kolb is a study in focus.“I do think there are a lot of similarities between challenging classes and the pressure you experience on the football field,” the senior kicker/punter with the Vancouver College Fighting Irish explained Thursday over the […]
VL Podcast 12.10.20: Basketball B.C. prez Stu Graham on the culture of hoops in his early-1970s North Delta Huskies neighbourhood and beyond!
The Varsity Letters time machine spins the knobs and dials and heads back to the year 1971 to celebrate (a wee bit early) a very special 50th anniversary BC high school moment! Our guest? Basketball B.C. president Stu Graham has worn so many hats, and he brings the entire rack to the fore as he […]
“He has the golden intangibles…” No one in BC high school football plays bigger than GW Graham’s 5-7 lineman & Chin Memorial winner Vince Ibardolaza!
ABBOTSFORD — Don’t try to tell Vince Ibardolaza what he’d can’t do on the football field.Instead, take a seat and watch what the undersized 5-foot-7, 210-pound offensive lineman with Chilliwack’s G.W. Graham Grizzlies can do.“He is really stoic and as even-keeled as they come, but a lot of that is his quiet confidence” Grizzlies head […]
A Sunday Read: Why Dec. 1, 1990 – the day the UNLV Rebels came to town – was the day Vancouver came of age as a basketball city!
VANCOUVER — I can still remember the day that the late, great Jim Taylor, the newspaper sports columnist of my youth and later a co-worker at The Province newspaper, invited me over to his Vancouver home so that I might conduct an interview for a feature story I wanted to write on him for my […]