West Vancouver Highlanders' Max Fraser was selected tournament MVP after leading his team to the Terry Fox Legal Beagle championship title Saturday in Port Coquitlam. (Photo by Blair Shier property of Blair.photo 2024. All Rights Reserved)
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Legal Beagle 2024: Led by its wrestling-themed Four Horsemen, West Vancouver Highlanders pull back-to-back-to-back wins out of the fire, then rise to No. 2 in latest Quad-A rankings!

PORT COQUITLAM — They’re named after a legendary stable of professional wrestlers ever assembled, and in a manner of speaking it’s actually very fitting because any time they’ve found themselves on the figurative ropes, a tag-team mentality has just seemed to take over.In a nutshell, that’s the best way to sum up the the quartet […]

Over a coaching career touching parts of five decades, Paul Eberhardt of the West Van Highlanders is one of B.C.'s longest-tenured head coaches. (Photo by Blair Shier property of Blair.photo 2023. All Rights Reserved)
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“Hey Coach Ebe, some season, huh?” From lessons learned as guest coach at Sacramento Kings camp, to magical year at West Van, Paul Eberhardt leads Highlanders into B.C. Sweet 16 clash against Rich Chambers & Terry Fox Ravens!

WEST VANCOUVER — He was bold enough as a high school senior back in the earliest days of the 1980s to step forward, take his own team and declare his major for life: Basketball coach.And this past fall, when the opportunity arose to attend the NBA training camp of the Sacramento Kings as a guest […]

A dunker, a high jumper, and a guy who looked like he had "...just arrived from Woodstock", Ted Cusick was a beloved coach who brought out the best in kids while having fun during a near 50-year coaching career. (Photo provided courtesy Cusick family 2021. All Rights Reserved)
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Ted Cusick (1942-2021): B.C. boys basketball loses a coach for the ages, but impact of The Cuz, in the hearts of five decades of his former players, will never be forgotten!

VANCOUVER — When he arrived on the first day of classes at Point Grey Secondary School, in September of 1973, he was a well-traveled first-year student-teacher with a fashion sense for the times.Fu Manchu moustache. Huge sideburns. Flared pants. Platform shoes.It was a look that made Ted Cusick so instantly relatable to the students he […]

It's been tough for high school recruits in the Class of 2021 to find places on college and university teams, yet Brookswood's Quinn Jasper and Harrison Robinson of Lord Byng have landed with Douglas College and Langara respectively. (Photos property of Howard Tsumura and Wilson Wong 2021. All Rights Reserved)
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“They need to be really persistent…” B.C. high school Class of 2021 grads in tough to find spots on crowded university & college rosters!

VANCOUVER — What’s the toughest challenge for a talented B.C. high school basketball player looking to continue his or her career as a student-athlete this coming season at the college or university level?How about simply finding a place to play?Student-athletes from B.C.’s hard-luck Class of 2021 have not only lost their entire senior season of […]

The BCSS governance proposal was passed Saturday morning. (Photo by Howard Tsumura property of VarsityLetters.ca 2021. All Rights Reserved)
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B.C. School Sports wins its governance vote: All of the voices weigh in on a tipping-point day in B.C. high school sports history!

B.C. School Sports has won the day, and its executive director says he’s confident the new governance proposal for high school sports in this province — one which unites all 20 of its member sports under one organizational umbrella — will be ready to begin operation, pending green lights from the health sector, this coming […]

If Utah Valley's Fardaws Aimaq can maintain his current pace and win the NCAA Div. 1 rebounding title, he would have the highest average since the late 1970s. (Photo by Jay Drowns, property of Utah Valley University Marketing 2021. All Rights Reserved)
Feature High School Boys Basketball University Men's Basketball

Richmond’s rebounder for the ages: A craving for caroms has Utah Valley’s Fardaws Aimaq treading on historic NCAA Div. 1 hardwood!

As the NCAA men’s Div. 1 regular season draws towards its completion, the microscope trained one of B.C.’s high school basketball’s most remarkable grads has continued to intensify.Yet nothing is slowing down the per-game rebounding average of former Steveston-London grad Fardaws Aimaq, the 6-foot-11, 260-pound redshirt sophomore centre with the Utah Valley Wolverines.With four more […]

Sands Scorpions head coach Matt McKay (crouching) isn't able to coach up his teamm during timeout this season, but the North Delta-based bench boss is hosting a series of online basketball clinics featuring coaches from all over North America. (Photo by Paul Yates property of Vancouver Sports Pictures 2021. All Rights Reserved)
Feature High School Boys Basketball University Men's Basketball

It’s a continental hoops cuisine! Matt McKay’s virtual Sands Basketball Clinics unite B.C. & North American coaches in the name of the game!

NORTH DELTA — They say that silence is deafening, and in perhaps the cruelest of ways, that was the auditory state most common among both high school basketball players and their coaches as each began 2021 by walking into gymnasiums normally teeming with the activity of a season in progress.“We all realized that last Wednesday […]

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10.07.20: Varsity Letters-The Podcast salutes Worlds Teachers Day! Longtime teacher-coaches join Tsumura in saluting our classroom mentors!

Hey, it’s Howard and welcome to another episode of Varsity Letters—The Podcast.   Today we open the show with a short tribute to the late Karin Khuong from Mike Carkner, one of her basketball coaches at Terry Fox Secondary in PoCo. Khuong, 16, lost a two-year battle with cancer on Sunday. The theme of the […]

B.C. high school boys basketball historian Ken Winslade, whose carefully catalogued archives make up the majority of the BCHSBBA's 75th anniversary hoops museum at the Langley Events Centre, poses in front of the team photo of his own high school team, New Westminster's 1956 B.C. champion Lester Pearson Mikes. (Photo by Gary Ahuja property of Langley Events Centre 2020. All Rights Reserved)
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B.C. boys high school basketball museum opens at LEC! Photos, memorabilia celebrate 75 years of provincial champions

LANGLEY — Fans making the rounds at the Langley Event Centre beginning Wednesday at the B.C. Boys High School Basketball Championships will get a chance to see the province’s best teams in action at four different tiers of competition.Yet in this, the Diamond Anniversary of the B.C.’s most tradition-laden and documented provincial championship tournament, there […]

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Varsity Letters PODCAST returns to talk BCHS rugby at the World Cup, big high school football wins and the start of a new hoops season!

LANGLEY — Varsity Letters — The Podcast returns for another week, this time touching on football, basketball and rugby. Off the top, we visit with Canadian Under-20 men’s rugby coach Adam Roberts, the longtime head coach at Surrey’s Earl Marriott Secondary. Roberts and host Howard Tsumura talk about the inherent pride that comes with taking […]