The Langley Christian Lightning seem ready to make a third run at the thus-far elusive B.C. senior girls Double A basketball championship title this March at the Langley Events Centre. It's a quest being led by the team's talented trio of seniors (left to right) Taelor Coxford, Sydney Bradshaw and Lainey Shelvey. (Photo graphic by Gabriel Lynn, photos by Howard Tsumura property of Varsity Letters 2022. All Rights Reserved)
Feature High School Girls Basketball

The ‘Strikes Thrice’ magic of the Langley Christian Lightning! In a tier-free girls high school basketball world, might Double-A powers be BC’s No. 1 overall team?

LANGLEY — Imagine a B.C. girls high school basketball world without any tiers of classification.Instead, replace it with a soup pot of sorts in which every team in the province is thrown together to form a chowder-like broth.Bring to a boil.Cover.Simmer.Let the cream rise to the top.And when you lift that cover, who might you […]

Terry Fox senior point guard Cerys Merton has been there to give her team a helping hand throughout her entire high school basketball career. (Photo by Howard Tsumura property of Varsity Letters 2021. All Rights Reserved)
Feature High School Girls Basketball University Women's Basketball

A Sunday Read: What defines the heart of Terry Fox’s UBC-bound point guard Cerys Merton? “She never turns down a battle!”

PORT COQUITLAM — Cerys Merton was born with a drive that needs no ignition.And these days, as we hit the stretch drive to the B.C. senior girls basketball championships, it’s a most fitting way to describe the energy and the presence that the Terry Fox Ravens’ senior point guard brings each time she sets foot […]

Bringing focus to team basketball, UFV Cascades' veteran forward Natalie Rathler (centre with ball) locks eyes with hard-cutting teammate Alexis Worrell during a game against the TWU Spartans. The 8-1 teams meet for a pair this weekend in Abbotsford. (Photo by Gibi Saini property of University of the Fraser Valley athletics 2021. All Rights Reserved)
Feature University Women's Basketball

Cascades thriving on its “one tough shot” mantra! Canada West’s top defence keys empowering ripple effect as 8-1 UFV hosts 9-1 TWU in weekend summit series!

ABBOTSFORD — It’s an axiom which has echoed through countless Fraser Valley Cascades’ women’s basketball practices over the 20 years in which Al Tuchscherer has served as the program’s head coach.This season, however, you could say in a figurative sense that those echoes have become deafening.“We always say that we want to give teams one […]

Trinity Western first-year guard Shemaiah Abatayo, continually looking to take her game to another level, gets the toughest test of her season Thursday. Abatayo's 8-0 Spartans entertain the 7-1 Fraser Valley Cascades at the Langley Events Centre. (Photo by Mark Janzen property of Trinity Western athletics 2021. All Rights Reserved)
Feature University Women's Basketball

B.C. women’s hoops game of the year! It’s 8-0 Trinity Western against 7-1 Fraser Valley in what’s shaping up as a classic clash Thursday night at the LEC!

LANGLEY — They are historic geographic rivals dating back to their days on the provincial college circuit when the British Columbia Collegiate Athletic Association was perhaps the longest league moniker in all of North American post-secondary sports.And they’ve spent a good long time building up their respective programs since moving up to U SPORTS.Yet on […]

The Trinity Western Spartans headed into their Canada West bye week with a perfect 4-0 conference record. (Photo by Howard Tsumura property of Varsity Letters 2021. All Rights Reserved)
Feature University Women's Basketball

Off to a perfect 4-0 start, Trinity Western Spartans women’s hoops reaps rewards of studious work during 2020’s cancelled campaign!

LANGLEY — They are the kinds of numbers which, through the real-life rigours of a cancelled COVID campaign, seem even more distant and faded than they really are.Yet ask Trinity Western women’s head basketball coach Cheryl Jean-Paul about the early signposts she has spotted with her Spartans’ club in the formative stages of the Canada […]

Fraser Valley point guard Maddy Gobeil and the rest of Abbotsford's Cascades learned a lot about their potential and process with a series of three preseason games against some of the best competition in Canada. (Photo by Dan Kinvig property of University of the Fraser Valley athletics 2021. All Rights Reserved)
Feature University Women's Basketball

UFV Women’s Basketball 2021-22: Emerging Cascades keep bar set high following a revelatory three-game test against nation’s best teams!

ABBOTSFORD — Even in the best of times  it’s a difficult proposition to put together a preseason schedule and know precisely the level of competition you’re going to be facing.Factor in the uncertainties of COVID as well as the returning status of any number of opposition veterans forced to keep one eye on their academic […]

Trinity Western point guard Kianna Wiens is part of a four-player core from the 2019-20 season which takes to the floor for the Spartans' home opener Thursday night against the Winnipeg Wesmen at the Langley Events Centre. (Photo by Scott Stewart property of TWU athletics 2021. All Rights Reserved)
Feature University Women's Basketball

TWU women’s hoops 2021-22: Spartans’ veteran core excited to push the re-start button in home-opener vs. blue-chip Winnpeg Wesmen!

LANGLEY — Ask university coaches across the country what the search for cohesion, chemistry and identity within their rosters has been like coming off the COVID-cancelled 2020-21 season, and while each will have their own way of describing the challenges, all are delivered along the same thematic road of putting all the pieces back together […]

Jayden White of the Yale Lions has overcome the odds to rebound from injury and find a place next season at the University of Alberta. In Edmonton, she will play hoops, major in education and continue her studies in American Sign Language. (Photo by Howard Tsumura property of Varsity Letters 2021. All Rights Reserved)
Feature High School Girls Basketball University Women's Basketball

Jayden White: Special signs along the way speak the truth of compassion, tenacity Yale Lions forward carries to Alberta Pandas!

ABBOTSFORD — Ask Jayden White what it means for her to have walked the walk through a star-crossed high school basketball career, and she’ll show you this photo of the inside of a Gatorade bottle cap containing the bone chips surgeons extricated from her knee back in 10th grade.“The biggest one is the size of […]

The Fraser Valley Cascades' dynamic duo of forward Deanna Tuchscherer (left) and point guard Maddy Gobeil are a pair of 19-year-old Cascades finding their solution to the cancelled Canada West campaign by signing pro contracts to play in Europe over the fall-winter season. (Photos by Dan Kinvig property of UFV athletics 2020. All rights reserved. Photo graphic by Gabriel Lynn)
Feature University Women's Basketball

A SUNDAY READ: Banking their Euros! Postmarked ‘Abby, BC’, UFV’s teen duo of Tuchscherer & Gobeil find their bounce with overseas pro careers

ABBOTSFORD — It was a basketball migration along a flight path neither could have ever anticipated just a handful of months ago.Yet this past Thursday, as both U SPORTS and its conference affiliate, Canada West, announced the official cancellation of the remainder of the 2020-21 university sports season (including basketball) due to the ongoing virulence […]

When UBC head coach Deb Huband cut down the nets back in 2004, she was bringing the Bronze baby back to Point Grey for the first time in 30 years. (Photo by Richard Lam property of UBC athletics 2019. All Rights Reserved)
Feature University Women's Basketball

From Debbie to Deb: How UBC’s iconic women’s hoop coach Huband has found balance on her journey towards a signature milestone

VANCOUVER — If playing and coaching represent the two sides of the basketball brain, then a life well-lived in both is a life which has achieved a rare level of balance… in some cases as spherically-perfect as the ball itself.