His gold medal moment! After a quarter century of leading Riverside senior girls basketball and on and off the court, Paul Langford, 66, snipped the final stitch at the Langley Event Centre's Centre Court, claiming the spoils of victory. (Photo by Wilson Wong 2023. All Rights Reserved)
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Riverside 70 Walnut Grove 52: How looking past the obvious and thinking outside the coaching box helped Sussex & Rapids beat Pemberton & Gators for the 2023 B.C. girls Quad-A hoops title!

LANGLEY — The hardest thing to do this season in the B.C. girls high school basketball world was to avoid concentrating on the obvious.And as so many coaches around this province would ultimately discover, paying too much defensive attention to perhaps the greatest scorer to ever grace our midst was ultimately not the answer to […]

A study in focus, Walnut Grove's Jessica Wisotzki has emerged as a blue-chip recruit of the Simon Fraser Clan.First, she makes her high school farewell Thursday in PoCo. (Photo by Paul Yates property of Vancouver Sports Pictures 2019. All Rights Reserved)
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Simon Fraser’s Jessica Wisotzki: After a high school all-star game farewell, huge future awaits as WGSS star set to don Clan colours

BURNABY — Basketball has continued to evolve into more and more of a position-less sport, one in which the standard line between guards and forwards has increasingly blurred and ultimately lost much of its relevance when weighed against the virtues of the dynamic hybrid athlete.

When Semiahmoo's Deja Lee (left) and Walnut Grove's Sophia Wisotzki clashed Saturday in the Top 10 Shoot-Out final, it was a battle of two of B.C.'s best 10th graders. (Photo by Howard Tsumura property of VarsityLetters.ca 2019. All Rights Reserved)
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Deja Wow! Youthful Semiahmoo Totems, led by MVP point guard Lee, top Gators to win 2019 Top 10 Shoot-Out

COQUITLAM — It was precisely the kind of late-game stretch that youthful teams are not supposed to survive. Pressure. The yips. The domino effect. You know the drill.

Tavia Rowell did her best to break the pressure of the Riverside Rapids on Friday night and help lead the Walnut Grove Gators into the Top 10 Shoot-Out championship final on Saturday at Coquitlam's Centennial Secondary. (File photo by Howard Tsumura property of VarsityLetters.ca 2019. All Rights Reserved)
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Top 10 Shoot-Out 2019 Final Four Friday: Tavia, WGSS Gators find a way to edge PoCo’s Riverside Rapids

Here’s our report from the first of two semifinal games at the 2019 Centennial Top 10 Shoot-Out senior girls basketball tournament:

Walnut Grove's Tavia Rowell leads the Gators' into the TBI 2018's 16-team field beginning Thursday at the Langley Events Centre. (Photo by Howard Tsumura property of VarsityLetters.ca 2018. All Rights Reserved)
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Tsumura Basketball 2018 girls: With a hungry senior trio bolstered by its next wave of youthful stars, Walnut Grove Gators look to defend TBI crown

LANGLEY — High school basketball careers have always concluded, in some measure, with their own kinds of final chapters. A game which remains in constant renewal is never shy for that next engrossing plot line.

Tavia Rowell of the No. 1-ranked Walnut Grove Gators (centre) tries to come to grips with a loose ball while being book-ended by Kelowna Owls' Kennedy Dickie (left) and Taya Hanson during championship final at Centennial's Top 10 Shoot-Out invitational Saturday evening in Coquitlam. (Varsity Letters photo by Howard Tsumura)
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TOP 10 SHOOT-OUT ’18: Rowell’s excellence, Rathler’s rugged spirit carry No. 1-ranked, 24-0 Walnut Grove Gators past No. 2 Kelowna Owls

COQUITLAM — There was a moment late in the third quarter of Saturday’s Top 10 Shoot-Out championship final, when Walnut Gators’ senior forward Natalie Rathler seemed to be checking to make sure she still had all of her teeth.

Walnut Grove's Jessica Wisotzki (9) is congratulated by teammate Tavia Rowell on Saturday as the LEC hosted the championship finale of the 2017 Tsumura Basketball Invitational. (Wilson Wong photo/UBC athletics)
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TBI 2017: Nobody beats the Wiz! New star born in Gator Country, as Jess Wisotzki scores 41 in Walnut Grove’s title finale win over Abby

LANGLEY — In the Wizard of Oz, when Dorothy wanted to get back to her most familiar and comfortable place, she put on her ruby red slippers and uttered the famous line “Click your heels together three times and say ‘There’s no place like home’ and you’ll be there.”