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)
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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)
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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 […]

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)
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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 […]

Trinity Western freshman guard Shemaiah Abatayo was forced to hit the court running this season after six straight months of COVID lockdown in the Philippines kept her out of B.C. from March through August. (Photo by Mark Janzen property of Trinity Western athletics 2021. All Rights Reserved)
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Shemaiah Abatayo: As Trinity Western’s ‘rookie’ guard preps for a hopeful 2021-22 re-start, she dishes on six months of COVID-forced lockdown in the Philippines!

LANGLEY — Shemaiah Abatayo, like the rest of Canada’s hard-luck Class of 2020 university freshmen recruits, will get a second chance to make a rookie impression when U Sports basketball courts flash their figurative green lights this coming fall.Nothing could have beaten the on-court experience that a 2020-21 Canada West season would have provided Abatayo […]

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VL Podcast 10.21.20: TWU hoops coach Cheryl Jean-Paul on Spartans’ Super Conference & holistic needs of coaches, athletes during COVID-19

Trinity Western Spartans’ women’s basketball coach Cheryl Jean-Paul checks in with host Howard Tsumura this week to chat about her school’s 2020 Leadership Super Conference, a remote event set to stream this Friday (full details at gospartansca). The focus this year, in this time of global pandemic, has shifted even more squarely on the holistic […]

Trinity Western point guard Kianna Wiens developed her leadership skills during a character-testing 2019-20 Canada West season. (Photo by Scott Stewart property of Trinity Western athletics 2020. All Rights Reserved)
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Trinity Western women’s basketball: Veteran coach Cheryl Jean-Paul keeps her youthful Spartans on a proven path to Canada West success

LANGLEY — There is a virtual mountain of statistical evidence to illustrate just how unforgiving a season the young Trinity Western women’s basketball team endured in 2019-20.The good part for the Spartans is that head coach Cheryl Jean-Paul has been through this tough, early part of the journey before with her program, and its precisely […]

Trinity Western's quartet of fifth-year veterans (left to right) Tessa Needham, Sarah Buckingham, Tessa Ratzlaff and Jessie Brown look to keep their senior seasons alive when the Spartans face UNBC to open the 2019 Canada West playoffs Friday at the Langley Events Centre. (Photo by Scott Stewart property of Trinity Western athletics 2019. All Rights Reserved)
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With ‘Fighting For Friday’ their refrain, TWU Spartans put Canada West season on line in sudden-elimination clash with UNBC

LANGLEY — It started out as the worst of times, it finished as the best of times. And now, after closing out their Canada West regular schedule with a game that serves as the perfect microcosm of their maddeningly inconsistent campaign, have the Trinity Western Spartans women’s basketball team shown enough to suggest that the playoffs […]

If you had to peek especially hard on the court to notice Sarah Buckingham in past seasons, all of that has changed for the fourth-year TWU Spartans' guard this season. (Photo by Scott Stewart property of Trinity Western athletics 2018. All Rights Reserved)
Trinity Western Spartans' women's basketball coach Cheryl Jean-Paul has led her unranked Spartans to a program-best 4-0 Canada West conference start. (Scott Stewart/TWU athletics)
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Preseason pain equals program-best Canada West gains as TWU Spartans sweep No. 6 Regina, return home at 4-0 for LEC weekend

LANGLEY — If you’re a fan of Trinity Western Spartans’ women’s basketball, it’s OK to go ahead and admit it. Yes, you counted up the losses which added up to an 0-7 exhibition mark, and you wondered just how much progress the Spartans were going to be making following a breakthrough 2017-18 campaign.

Trinity Western head coach Cheryl Jean-Paul enters her ninth season at the helm of Spartans' basketball, and fifth-year forward Tessa Ratzlaff will play her biggest role yet in the fortunes of a program which last season sat on the cusp of national tourney qualification. (Photo by Scott Stewart property of TWU athletics)
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Trinity Western women’s basketball: A taste of March Madness gives Spartans a new recipe for success

LANGLEY — The date and the stakes were not lost on anyone within the world of Trinity Western women’s basketball. Yes, for the first time ever, a game in the month of March. And with it, a last-ditch shot to qualify for the U Sport Final 8 championships.