By Howard Tsumura
Varsity Letters
(A note from your author: Due to play-by-play broadcasting responsibilities for all four of Friday’s Final Four games at 3A and 4A, I was unable to produce this story for readers by a reasonable hour. Instead, a night’s rest allows me to present it here from a more rested state of mind. — Howard)
LANGLEY TOWNSHIP — If you’ve watched the play of the Vernon Panthers over the first three days of this 2026 B.C. senior girls Triple-A basketball championships, you have no doubt noticed a team which wears its defensive heart on its collective sleeve.
Yet the full measure of this mid-2020’s outshoot of the famed ’40 Minutes of Hell’ defence employed by head coach Nolan Richardson and his Arkansas Razorbacks men’s teams of the mid-1990s succeeds not because of its predecessor’s ferocious name, or it’s highlight-reel producing prowess.
Instead, its definition springs from the basic principles and staples of pressure defence, led of course by the fact that mental tenacity — under any conditions — is No. 1, an absolutely non-negotiable habit that eventually becomes an in-born credo.
On Friday afternoon, the Panthers, seeded No. 1 in the field of 16, advanced to today’s championship final game (5:30 p.m. LEC Arena Bowl) against the red-hot and rolling No. 2-seeded Langley Christian Lightning following yet another textbook example of their irrepressible will, a 60-51 win over Prince George’s No. 5-seed Duchess Park Condors and its remarkable star guard Zahra Ngabo.
“Oh, I mean, that was just gutsy, gutsy basketball, like, God, I just admire how hard they work,” exhaled Vernon head coach Dave Tetrault, whose team took a 48-44 lead into the fourth quarter and illogically just kept getting better and better at the defensive end of the floor.
“The other team, they gave us everything we could handle, but my team… they never give up. You know, when we go to the huddle, we’re talking about ‘We’re not giving up.’ It doesn’t matter what happens. It doesn’t (matter if the) other team scores.They’re talking to each other, that they’re going to keep playing. And they just kept playing.”
Making it all the more intriguing was the game’s subplot: Finding of way to slow the Condors’ 5-foot-8 Grade 11 guard Ngabo, one of handful of players across all four tiers at this week’s championships whose explosive yet cerebral dribble-drive sensibilities are such as to render any kind of static defensive response as a schematic doomed to failure.
In the case of the Panthers, the plan to slow Ngabo was actually to dial back on the depth of the court in which they would deploy their defence, a clear show of respect for what they were about to face.
So why didn’t Vernon’s press extend full court, when it’s the bread-and-butter of their DNA?
“Well, you know, Zahra, (she’s) so good with them that we have a hard time,” admitted Tetrault. “Like, we tried to double her, but you know, she’s so good. And so strong, right? We tried to just take the ball out of our hands, which we did sometimes. I mean, I thought she played spectacularly. You know, I’m just happy to find a way to win and advance.”
The plan worked not so much because Ngabo had a hand in her face every time she shot, or because she was held to 0-for-10 from the field in the first half.
A number of her offerings swirled in the cylinder and rimmed out, and sure, some of her shots could be classified as rushed.
In the third quarter, where she did all of her scoring, she hit two threes and scored all 10 of her points.
A basketball purist will tell you that on nine nights out of 10, it was the outlier in a sample of consistent 25 point-per-game performances.
Mary Kessenich courtesy Vancouver Sports Pictures 2026. All Rights Reserved)
And yet that’s the essence of the 2025-26 Panthers.
Presence, or more specifically imbedded presence of mind, is one of the game’s most powerful tools.
And Vernon plays its defence with such indefatigable consistency that after a while, they’ve implanted a millisecond of doubt in a player’s mind: A close out is coming, those elbows hurt, or wow, that’s how hard you have to believe when you trap.
“I mean, that was not (Zahra’s) best offensive game and it wasn’t our team’s best offensive game,” admitted Duchess Park head coach Reid Roberts afterwards. “We just missed some easy shots, but you know what? Vernon, they’re just, they’re tough. They play relentless defence, so they make you miss those shots and you don’t get a lot of second opportunities. So, I mean, hats off to them, for sure.”
Forward Emily Clarke led the Condors with 12 points while guard Devyn Bjorn, battling foul problems the entire game, finished with 10.
For her part, Ngabo showed the strength of character in the post-game, at a low ebb exhibiting the remarkable quality of understanding how the beautiful game can take as harshly as it can so many other times so welcomely reward.
“I wish more of my shots could have dropped, maybe made some smarter decisions, but it is what it is, and Vernon? Vernon’s gonna go kill it,” she said through her streaming tears.”
It’s a shooter mature enough to know the rules of engagement that come with the willingness to want to take big shots, even when they’re in the game that is the last step to the B.C. championship final.
“You gotta keep going… yeah,” she said. “These nights will happen. It’s a shame it was today, but tomorrow will be better. There’s always another game.”
That tomorrow is now today for the Panthers.
And while Vernon has navigated the tricky path of three straight wins to punch its collective B.C. title-game ticket for the first time since it lost to North Vancouver’s Seycove Seyhawks in the 2017 Double-A final, its effort needs to reach yet another level against the equally unflappable brand of basketball its opposition from Langley Christian has shown over its metronomic march to Championship Saturday.
For Vernon, it’s a call to point guard Chloe Collins and under-sized 5-foot-11 post-forward Adie Janke (12 points), along with guard Isla Jolly (11 points) — the team’s only three seniors — to once again define their credo.
To Grade 11’s like Charlotte Routley and Ashely Yuson, and to the likes of Chloe Bicknell, Caelyn Fitzpatrick, the latter two who along with Jolly, each of whom embraced their shared defensive roles against Ngabo.
With the starting quartet of 6-foot-3 centre Gaby Vis, point guard Zoe Bradshaw, power forward Georgia Van der Waarde, long-range ready Sorrel Lenz and lightning-quick Payton Brunoro all firing on all cylinders in Langley Christian’s impressive quarterfinal and semifinal wins over No. 7 Sa-Hali and No. 3 St. Michaels University School, the matchup on paper looks to be every bit worthy of a game for all the marbles.
Collins, the tough-minded Panthers’ point guard who led all scorers in Friday’s win with 25 points, was living in the moment when asked Friday in the post-game to describe the ways in which she and her teammates will meet a tough final challenge.
“Just soaking it in, embracing the opportunity and what it took to get here,” she said. “We know that we put in the time and that we’re ready to go. We worked hard to get here.”
Added Tetrault on Friday: “And so to have a chance to win it all tomorrow… all season long, this is how we’ve played. You saw it today, and it’s the same every day. We’ll come in tomorrow, and we’ll be ready to play.”
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