By Howard Tsumura
VarsityLetters.ca
VANCOUVER — Olivia Weekes can do so many different things on the basketball court so well, perhaps it’s no surprise that in recorded UBC Thunderbirds’ program history, she sits in the Top 15 of 10 different major statistical categories.
And along the way what has been most clear are the ways in which the the 5-foot-11, fifth-year senior guard has been so adept at blurring the lines used to define both back court and front court productivity.
Put all of that together and maybe the best way to define her is to call her undefinable.
On Friday, as the No. 4 nationally-ranked ‘Birds (8-1, 4-0 Canada West) return to War Memorial Gymnasium for a third straight week of conference play with a 5:30 p.m. opening tip against its traditional rivals, the Victoria Vikes (5-5, 2-2), Weekes will start her 106th game in blue-and-gold, a span which not only placed her in the crucible of three head coaching changes, but asked her each time to forge a new on-court identity.
Through it all she has led with a determined yet malleable demeanour, revealing a basketball soul whose super power is best described by her new head coach.
“She’s one of those players that just has a lot of gravity,” says Dave Taylor of Weekes, who through the ‘Birds first four Canada West games is averaging 14.0 points, 8.0 rebounds and 2.0 assists per game on a team not only deep with talent but still nowhere near their ceiling. “She just attracts defences, and so that opens up her teammates, too.”
Interesting how Taylor’s choice of ‘gravity’ winds up being apt in other ways as well, especially when it comes to describing a player who has been a grounding force in her team’s togetherness.
“If you’re starting, or you’re the eighth man, if you’re injured, it’s been pretty evident this season that everyone wants it for each other,” says Weekes, perhaps no where more so than of a core of fourth- and fifth-year student-athletes who played two seasons for Erin McAleenan and two more for Isabel Ormond before Taylor came to town following 18 seasons at the University of Regina.
“I don’t know if it’s come from the fact that we’ve had so many different coaches that the only reliable thing we’ve had is each other, but that’s what it’s kind of felt like,” adds the Winnipeg native.
In fact it is undeniable that meeting change, adversity and everything else that comes within the demanding schedule of a student-athlete has given her a kind of gritty resilience and confidence she says she’d never trade for anything.
Yet before we continue with the story of Weekes’ journey at UBC, we’ll segue into the team she and her teammates will be facing Friday as part of UBC’s annual Courtside Basketball Festival.
FIRST, A TRANSITION TO FRIDAY’S GAME
From a team perspective, the Thunderbirds have much to prepare for as former longtime UBC assistant Carrie Watts brings her Vikes back to Vancouver on Friday.
The Vikes are the highest scoring team in the B.C. division through the first two weekends of Canada West conference play at 68.5 ppg, a total that puts them 12th nationally. UBC sits third in the B.C. Division at 65.5 ppg, a number which places them 20th nationally.
The Birds have been staunch defensively, however, keeping their confernecefoes under 30 per cent from the field and allowing a national-best 38.8 ppg. Victoria is ranked 26th defensively, allowing an average of 66.0 ppg.
Led by it’s fifth-year cornerstones in forwards Abigail Becker (13.0 ppg, 8.5 rebounds) and Mimi Sigue (12.5 ppg, 7.3 rpg), and third-year forward Makenna Anderson (10.3 ppg, 5.3 rpg), the Vikes are among the nation’s best in generating free throw trips,
And how about the youthful infusion Watts has brought in this season, led by a pure freshman from the capital city installed as the team’s starting point guard?
“Well, I am having PTSD, I think, because I remember losing in the (CIAU) nationals when Lindsey Brooke won a national title years ago and I was an assistant coach (at Regina)” Taylor explained. “Now I’m dealing with her daughter and she is good. Like, she is not a rookie point guard.”
The topic, of course, has turned to Avery Geddes, Victoria’s freshman lead guard who through four conference games is averaging 11.5 points, 4.5 assists with a positive turnover ratio, to go along with 2.3 rebounds per contest.
Geddes starred throughout her high school career at Victoria’s St. Michaels University School where Brooke coached both her and Anderson.
And besides that, “They are a very interesting team because they have a very veteran post tandem in Becker and Mimi Sigue. They are so big and they can score inside.
“Their young group of perimetre players are very talented and their rookie class is very good. They’ve got the ability to play fast, but they are also really good in the half court. So far in league, they are our biggest challenge yet in terms of what we are going to do defensively and how we’re going to stop them because they can do it in a bunch of ways.”
Friday’s game is followed by the UBC hosting the defending national champion Victoria Vikes at 7:30 p.m.
It’s all a part of the Thunderbirds’ annual Courtside Festival where the twin bill gets an injection if some much-deserved gravitas with deluxe spotlight introductions, as well as an opportunity to watch warm-ups as the doors open an hour prior to the women’s 5:30 p.m. tip-off.
WHAT DEFINES OLIVIA WEEKES
A season-ending injury to fellow star Mona Berlitz. The transfer of national Rookie of the Year Keira Daly and the graduation of senior post (and current UBC assistant) Jessica Clarke has not only taken a combined 40 ppg out of the Thunderbirds’ rotation, it’s put Olivia Weekes back into a position she had previously played over her second and third seasons at UBC.
Yes, once more she is being tasked as the principal catalyst within UBC’s offensive schematic.
Yet in the Thunderbirds’ case, on a team with a deep and talented roster, that does not mean a bevy of different clear-out plays for Weekes or anything resembling an over-reliance on having the be the primary finisher.
Instead, it’s about her possessing the ball in the spaces where her vast skill set puts the defence in jeopardy, thus allowing her the options to score or facilitate.
Again, gravity, with all of its push and pull possibilities, is a perfect description.
“We need her scoring and it’s often times we don’t do a good job getting her the ball in space where she can make plays happen,” explained Taylor. “When we’re successful, we get her the ball in the places that she can score.
“And we’re lucky with her because she can score at the three,” Taylor continues, “she can score on you driving to the basket, she can score kind of in the so-called low-post areas too. And, you know, she’s so good at drawing fouls and she’s a good rebounder. So we just have to probably do a better job, kind of finding her because teams are really keying on her this year, too.
“And I think that’s been a change from last year. Obviously, it was Mona and Kiera and Jess. too. There were a lot of people for the teams to really try and take away. I’d say, you know, watching the games now, Olivia is obviously the number one focus of other team’s scouts. And so when that happens, you’ve go to work a little harder as a team to get her those looks because the other team is obviously built up their defence to do it.”
Of course the newcomers to the UBC roster are just now dipping their toes into the waters at War.
Fifth years Jaeli Ibbetson and Cassie Joli-Coeur, at 6-foot and 6-foot-3 respectively, and 6-foot-3 freshman Brooke Wagner are now fully engaged in the process of making their time together on the floor, both with Weekes and the rest of the team, imbibe as natural as possible, and their progression will ultimately tell this team, by playoff time, what their true roles and responsibilities will be.
In the meantime, it’s OK to tell Olivia Weekes to be the go-to player.
She thinks back a few seasons, to her time former head coach McAleenan, as a time in which she was able to affirm what she was capable of accomplishing at the U SPORTS level after coming out of Winnipeg’s Vincent Massey Collegiate.
“I think definitely it helped in my second year (2022-23) getting the confidence from Erin because my team really needed me to score at that point,” Weekes states of an emerging team that finished 11-9 in the conference, and on which she became a full-time starter who averaged a team-leading 13.8 points and 6.8 rebounds.
“Taking on that role is something that prepared me not just for this year, but also for last year,” she adds, as the break-out for Berlitz, the immediate rise of Daly and the addition of Clarke in the post meant team success would hinge on sacrificing numbers for the good of the team.
And as UBC advanced to the national Final Four last March, it was clear that roles had been accepted and embraced.
“It’s all prepared me for every challenge down the road.”
Coach Taylor, in one of his early practices with the UBC team, remembers being taken aback in the best way possible while overseeing a team drill.
“One time, her team was losing a drill and I bugged her about it,” began Taylor of what was for him was an early character-defining moment with Weekes. “She is so competitive. She pretty much hacked the other person to steal the ball, and I didn’t even call it because I love it. I love that because you don’t want to lose.
“Literally, if I went to her and I told her that the best thing for this team is that you never take another shot, she’d do that. She just cares so much about winning, about the culture of this team. She will tell you that every single player on this team has an incredibly important role in this team, and she helps them celebrate that. It’s so special.”
Ask Weekes about what her final season at UBC really means to her and it’s ultimately not about the act of defining certain moments of adversity that wind up making her personal Top 10.
It more about the other stuff.
The stuff that ends up sticking with you for the long haul.
“I wouldn’t change a thing, literally, nothing,” she explained.
“I have loved my five years here and I think if anything, it’s not even about what happened (on the court). It’s more about the people… my teammates and how close I am with them and how very grateful I am to have gotten to meet Dave and experience his coaching style.
“I wouldn’t have asked for it,” she concludes of where her mindset was five years ago when the first challenging signs of change were heaped upon her and her teammates. “But I wouldn’t change it now that it’s happened. That’s for sure.”
Gravity can indeed push back, but it can also has the power to pull everything around you into a kind of perfect alignment.
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