Burnaby South forward Eric Li (left) was one of several Rebels seniors denied a Grade 12 season due to the pandemic. (Photo by Howard Tsumura property of Varsity Letters 2021. All Rights Reserved)
Feature High School Boys Basketball

A season without high school sports: Says Burnaby South AD Robbie Puni: “…when you don’t have it, you gain the valuable element of what you are missing out on”

BURNABY — Finding a way to most accurately describe the loss of the entire 2020-21 high school sports season in B.C. is at once an impossible challenge.Instead, Robbie Puni offered his observations.“We’re seeing a lot of kids without a team walking through the hallways, and some are carrying a basketball or a volleyball,” the longtime […]

G.P. Vanier Towhees head coach Larry Street. (Photo by Wilson Wong 2021. All Rights Reserved)
Feature Podcast

VL Podcast 02.17.21: From Bby South to SFU to Fox, Moody, Vanier and the world, Larry Street has been a ‘Mr. Basketball’ for the ages!

Varsity Letters is back this week with one of B.C.’s most enduring basketball coaches and personalities: Larry Street. The former Burnaby South grad, who played collegiately at Simon Fraser and has, for the past generation, coached the senior boys varsity at Courtenay’s G.P. Vanier Secondary, Street joins host Howard Tsumura to chat about his lifelong […]

R.A. McMath's Travis Hamberger (left), here being defended by Centennial's Leif Skelding at the 2018 B.C. Junior Varsity championship tournament, will lead his Wildcats into the 2020 TBI this coming December. (Photo by Howard Tsumura property of VarsityLetters.ca 2020. All Rights Reserved)
Feature High School Boys Basketball

TBI Boys 2020: With a plethora of positivity and plenty of warm hoops karma, B.C.’s best accept invites for an early-season date at the LEC!

NORTH DELTA — Jesse Davis. Everett Swaim. Justin Sunga. Bobby Mabeny. KC Ibekwe. Ben Manns. Caleb Lyons. Rav Randhawa. Clay Kurtz. Karn Shergill. Rourke MacDonald. Travis Hamberger. Gyan Sandhu. Rhys Maestre. Milan John. Daniel Marcelo. Ekman Sohal. Arars Jahangiri. Jaydan Bains. Kyle Kong.

Lord Tweedsmuir Panthers' rising senior guard Alyza Aikins will lead her team into the 2020 Tsumura Basketball Invitational this December at the Langley Events Centre. (Photo by Howard Tsumura property of VarsityLetters.ca 2020. All Rights Reserved)
Feature High School Girls Basketball

Twenty teams for TBI 2020! Our roster for the annual senior girls Tsumura Basketball Invitational features B.C.’s best of the best!

LANGLEY — Our collective fingers are crossed with the hope that a safe fall and winter season is on the horizon for high school sports in the province of B.C.And in the spirit of that positivity, we hope that one of the final highlights of a challenging 2020 calendar year will be the latest edition of […]

Following championship careers at Burnaby South, the basketball recruiting road has brought Rebels' stars Jusuf Sehic (left) and Sasha Vujisic to Kamloops' Thompson Rivers WolfPack for the 2020-21 Canada West season. (Photos by Wilson Wong property of UBC Athletics 2020. All Rights Reserved)
Feature High School Boys Basketball University Men's Basketball

A northern migration: Why Burnaby South’s Vujisic and Sehic seem a perfect fit in their hoops reunion with Kamloops’ TRU WolfPack

BURNABY — Back in 2018, over a precious few weeks of March Madness, Jusuf Sehic and Sasha Vujisic wrote one heck of a first chapter together on the basketball court.It was a budding storyline, co-penned between a pair of Burnaby South Secondary stars, which seemed to cry out for more.After all, when was the last […]

Wading through a sea of Burnaby South fans who have stormed the court at the Langley Events Centre is Rebels' 6-foot-10 senior Sasha Vujisic. (Photo by Paul Yates property of Vancouver Sports Pictures 2020. All Rights Reserved)
Feature High School Boys Basketball

A Sunday Read: How Burnaby South’s Sasha Vujisic made the final game of his high school career his best, leading Rebels past Kelowna for a B.C. Quad A crown

LANGLEY — Sasha Vujisic walked into his team’s halftime locker room Saturday night at the Langley Events Centre and had a little talk with himself.“The truth is, I was just playing bad,” said Vujisic, Burnaby South’s 6-foot-10 senior forward in self-critique of the opening half of the final game of his high school basketball career.Considering […]

Burnaby South's Sasha Vujisic (left) does his best to disrupt Centennial's Paul Didenko during Sunday's inaugural Fraser North Quad-A final at the LEC. (Photo by Howard Tsumura property of VarsityLetters.ca 2020. All Rights Reserved)
Feature High School Boys Basketball

Ten days before 75th B.C. boys tourney tips off, No. 1 Burnaby South and No. 2 Centennial remind an LEC sell-out crowd what is so great about this game!

LANGLEY — Once, twice, and now three times makes it a trend. At least that’s what Centennial co-coach Rob Sollero surmised Sunday night, after his No. 2-ranked Centaurs faced the No. 1-ranked Burnaby South Rebels for the third time this season, this time for the first-ever Fraser North Quad-A hoops crown.

Abbotsford's Lockhart MacGreggor (centre) battles through the defence of Kelowna's Everett Schmuland (left) and Ryan Braam during B.C. junior boys quarterfinal play Sunday at the LEC. (Photo by Howard Tsumura property of VarsityLetters.ca 2020. All Rights Reserved)
Feature High School Boys Basketball

FINAL EDITION B.C. Junior Boys Championships DAY 2: Top seeds all advance as Celtics, ‘Dawgs, Owls, Gators combine for a high-powered Final Four

LANGLEY — How’s that for a seeding committee that knows it’s stuff?It’s a draw that may be distinctly lacking in Cinderellas, yet there is no question that the whichever teams claims the 2020 B.C. junior boys basketball title is going to be full deserving.No., 1 seed St. Patrick’s, No. 2 seed Sir Winston Churchill, No. […]

Cutting a path through the Centennial Centaurs this past December at TBI 2019 is Kelowna's Jonathon Haughton. The senior guard and the rest of the Owls play host to this weekend's Western Canada Invitational. (Photo by Howard Tsumura property of VarsityLetters.ca 2020. All Rights Reserved)
Feature High School Boys Basketball

Western Canada 2020: No. 3 Owls bring the best to Kelowna! No. 1 Rebels, No. 4 Royals, No. 6 Saints joined by Alberta, Manitoba’s best

KELOWNA — Like every head coach hosting an invitational tournament, the one accepted advantage is the built-in ability to schedule as cushy a first-round opponent as is possible.

Centennial's Dom Parolin was a shot-blocking machine in Saturday's Legal Beagle title-game win over Burnaby South and was later picked Top Defensive Player. (Photo by Howard Tsumura property of VarsityLetters.ca 2019. All Rights Reserved)