By Howard Tsumura
VANCOUVER — It was 15 years ago, in my past writing life as a reporter at The Province newspaper, that I first had the opportunity to talk to a young teacher and basketball coach who was just starting to make a difference with the student-athletes in her East Vancouver neighbourhood.
Back then, at the age of 27, Elisa Wong was still navigating the tricky path towards finding a full-time teaching position, yet she was already showing a professorial depth of understanding when it came to identifying all of the cornerstone elements that went into making a high school athletic department its own empowered and self-supporting community.
And now, a decade-and-a-half later, at the age of 42, in her long-established roles as a P.E. teacher, as a girls basketball coach and as co-athletic director at Sir Charles Tupper Secondary School, she has played a leading role in fostering a most sustainable eco-system.
In fact if you sharpen your pencil and begin tallying a most uniquely credentialed slice of the school’s coaching membership over the current fall, winter and upcoming spring seasons, you’ll discover that some 25 of Tupper’s very own Tiger alums are, or will be, volunteering their time to coach girls and boys volleyball, wrestling and basketball programs, along with the girls ice hockey program.
Today’s story started out as an attempt to chronicle all of the growth, spirit, co-operation and rising success being enjoyed the past few seasons within Tupper’s girls basketball program, one whose blueprint is not anchored by anyone with the label of ‘head coach’ but rather under-pinned by a large and overlapping cadre of ‘co-coaches’ from its senior team down through its Grade 8’s.
After all, a veteran-laden Sir Charles Tupper team making its first-ever appearance at the Tsumura Basketball Invitational by opening its four-day run this Wednesday (8:30 a.m.) against at the Langley Events Centre against the local R.E. Mountain Eagles at 8:30, has fallen one win shy of qualifying for the B.C. Triple-A championship tournament the past two seasons.
Nothing has changed from this story’s original narrative, but over the course of our investigation it became abundantly clear that girls athletics at Tupper has now become a part of the B.C. championship podium discussion in so many other sports.
Tupper?
Yes, Tupper.
Last season, the Tigers girls track and field program finished with the bronze medal at the B.C. Triple-A championship meet.
The girls soccer team lost in the Final Four at the B.C. Double-A soccer championships last spring en route to a fourth-place finish.
The girls field hockey program was introduced two years ago, and although they have not yet qualified for provincials, this year they were ranked in the B.C. Top 10.
And earlier this season, that was indeed East Van’s Tupper Tigers finishing second to Victoria’s powerhouse Oak Bay in the top-tiered B.C. Triple-A girls cross-country championships.
“What are the intangibles?” begins Wong, when asked about the prolific buy-in being experienced throughout her school’s athletic department by its alums.
“We have so many alumni coming back because I think they had such a good time,” continues the 2001 grad of nearby John Oliver now in her 17th season as Tupper’s co-athletic director, the first 14 alongside former Commonwealth Games gold medal-winning wrestler Paul Hughes, and the last three and counting with ex-UBC ice hockey player Alison Koyanagi. “I think we make it such a nice community that they want to come back and coach. It’s those little things, like ‘When I was in Grade 11 or 12, and we were in leadership class, we had to coach. We had to score-keep.’ And we let them know that is our expectation, that this what we do here.”
Says Jeff Gourley, the longtime former head coach of the Tupper senior boys basketball, who singlehandedly put the school on the provincial map through the consistency of his winning ways at the provincial level: “Do things like leadership courses help? Oh my gosh they do. It’s about teaching the kids through sport that it really isn’t about sport in the end. It’s all about life. Elisa was once one of the those kids that got it, and she’s paid that back over and over and over again. I can’t tell you.”
And it’s not just Tupper’s alums. It’s teacher-coaches. It’s parent groups. And, of course, it’s the student-athletes
A NEW COACHING TREE
No one is too sure when the last time the Sir Charles Tupper Tigers senior girls basketball team qualified for the provincial championships, although many suggest it last happened in the 1980s.
Terry Loo, who has been a part of the Tigers’ girls program at Tupper for 32 years and counting, is the resident expert on such matters.
He believes that in addition to missing the B.C.’s by one win the past two seasons, the same fate befell the team in 1992 or 1993, as well as in 2000.
The season has just started, and it’s a long way to the 2026 provincial Triple-A tourney, yet this season’s team has the kinds of hallmarks that could make such a journey a reality, with everything else being equal.
“The seniors are looking strong, and we have about 13 players,” said Wong of a group, which is led by 6-foot-1 senior forward Denira Dundas, also a club standout with Vancouver’s Split Second, and who represented B.C. on the provincial Under 17 team at the Canada Summer Games, along with the like of former Brookswood guard Jordyn Nohr, and Kitsilano’s standout 6-foot-2 forward Lily Stewart.
“And I’m coaching the juniors as well,” added Wong of the aforementioned group overlap, “so we do a lot of practises together, meaning we can transition those kids into senior quite easily.
“So our team hasn’t really changed from last year,” she added of a returning core around Dundas that includes seniors like Angelina Panago, Taya Henrickson and Zion Nicholson, and key Grade 11s like Isabel Daly and Amy Laker.
“We don’t know what everyone else is going to look like, but all I can say is that I think we’re going to be hanging around for the next couple of years or so.”
And while Wong and others within the Tupper athletics department have made a concerted effort to keep alumni fully engaged from a coaching perspective, so too has Wong done her best to insure female coaches are on hand to provide not only in-game instruction but role modelling and mentorship.
“I try to get a lot of women to come back and usually they’re alumni… and it’s great for the girls to see all these powerful, strong and very confident women that coach and that role model,” said Wong, who this year co-coaches the senior girls team alongside Kristine Cumaual, Ann Borromeo, Toni Li and Loo, the lone male.
Wong also overlaps with the junior team, co-coaching with Mary Sanagan, Rosie Trudel, Christina Oshowy, as well as the star senior Dundas.
Cumaual and Li are teachers at Tupper, while Sanagan, Trudel and Oshowy are all parents of either past or current Tupper players.
And to put a bow on the other girls coaches:
*Li and Matt Williams, the latter also a teacher at Tupper, coach the Grade 9s.
*Two Tupper alums, Julia Cabral and Cruz Ormonde coach the Grade 8s.
It’s also evident how much value is placed on current Tupper girls players serving as assistant coaches.
Besides Dundas helping coach the juniors, Grade 11 players Laker and Isabel Daley are part of the coaching staff of the Grade 9s, while junior players Isla Craig and Molly Mittler are on the coaching staff of the Grade 8 team.
“She means everything,” Koo says of Wong. “I mean, she basically takes care of every bit of organization, too. All the paperwork, and she has Allison Koyanagi as a co-athletic director, and those two are unbelievable.
“You know, you would hear stories of Elisa that during lunch hour, it can be tough to even get a chance to talk with her because she is always on the go, organizing something. Her dedication is unbelievable and I think all of the other people see that as well, and that’s why there’s so much buy-in and why people always going to lend a helping hand.”
PAYING IT FORWARD
Looking back 15 years on my first visit with Elisa Wong, it’s refreshing to see that her words and her actions have each gone on to walk their talk.
Wong told me back in our 2010 interview, that during her senior year of high school (2000-01) at John Oliver, she served as an assistant coach under Dawn Welles on the Grade 8 team which happened to include her younger sister Jessie on the roster.
It wound up being the start of an influential experience that ultimately convinced her to keep coaching, whether she had a full-time job or not.
“I originally felt that I wasn’t going to coach, but I also understand how important it is to have a female coach in the program as a role model,” said Wong, who coached at Welles’ side throughout her younger sister’s entire 8-12 playing career at Tupper. “It’s what made me decide to keep coaching.”
It led her along a path paved with many more coaching figures she has continued to both study and hold in high esteem.
“There’s so many I look up to and so many where I might take a piece from here and another piece from there,” she says, touching on the likes of Mike Evans and Mitra Tshan from Britannia, Pat Lee from John Oliver, Greg Eng from Langara and Gourley and Loo from Tupper, among others.
And maybe because she’s made it a habit to be around so many different coaches at Tupper that it’s no surprise that her biggest of all influence is not a basketball coach.
“The ultimate person I looked up to was my high school field hockey coach Pat Spencer,” Wong says of her high school playing days at John Oliver. “She was always calm, funny and patient. You know the saying ‘…kids might not always remember what you said, but they’ll remember how you made them feel’? She motivated me and I just remember how much I loved playing for her. I think I’ve got the funny part down… I’m still working on the calm and patient part.”
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