Your author and Recruits List contributor Wilson Wong are hoping to once again break past the 1,000-name mark as the 15th annual B.C. Recruits List works towards a June 26th publication date. (Photo courtesy Blair Shier 2020. All Rights Reserved)
Feature High School University

As our B.C. Recruits List preps for June 26 publication, my hat tips to faithful correspondents far & wide, and to B.C.’s amazing grad Class of 2021!

Dear loyal readers!

Just wanted to take the time to let you all know why the main page at Varsity Letters as been so quiet over this past week.

In a nutshell, your faithful author has been hard at work fact-checking, spell-checking and re-formatting the mountain of names which have been submitted as part of our 15th annual Varsity Letters’ B.C. Recruits List.

While still not 100 per cent certain of our publication date, we are presently working towards June 26th. Stay tuned on Twitter and right here at VarsityLetters.ca for further details.

If you haven’t already done so and you want to send a name of graduating B.C. high school student who will play sports at the post-secondary level this coming season, please provide the following ASAP: Name, sport, high school, height, position, university destination. We will accept the names of those headed to U SPORTS, CCAA, NCAA, NAIA or U.S. junior colleges. Send your information to howardtsumura@gmail.com

All of that said, the response has been incredible.

My thanks first go out to our bread-and-butter source.

Without an incredible team of sports information directors at colleges and universities from B.C. to Newfoundland and all points inbetween, the majority of names we receive on an annual basis would not be possible.

Yet it is impossible to ignore the rest of our community, right here in B.C., who take as much pride in the thoroughness of the B.C. Recruits List as I, and have stepped forward with huge lists of athletes I would not have received otherwise.

Just as an example, what a nice surprise to get the names of somewhere around 30 B.C. student-athletes, all of whom are headed to NCAA programs next season on field lacrosse scholarships.

From the U.S. junior college ranks, through the NAIA, and from NCAA Div. 3 through Div. 1, B.C. student-athletes will continue to have incredible representation at institutions south of the line.

And of course, we have the Canadian university world blanketed from coast to coast, and that is at both the U SPORTS and the CCAA level.

We go from Vancouver Island University in Nanaimo, to the campus of Acadia in Wolfville, Nova Scotia, to the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa, right back to the top of Simon Fraser’s Burnaby Mountain campus.

High school athletic directors, thank you, especially this year, for taking extra special care to talk with your coaches, scan your student body, and send me the names of all of your post-secondary student-athletes.

As always, huge thanks to Wilson Wong for his huge personal investment in this project, volunteering so many hours over the years, providing a mammoth list of unheralded recruits no one else could find, and also incredible photography of so many of our listed athletes. 

And finally a shout-out to the parents… the best part of this job is getting your personal email letting me know where your son or daughter is headed this season.

The pandemic has tested us all.

I am the first to admit that for the first time in my career, my daily writing routine has been affected.

I guess it’s what happens when you’re broken-hearted for 15 months over the silence on our courts and playing fields, knowing all the while, of course, that our health and safety must come first.

Without getting too much off topic, my apologies go out to all of the graduating Grade 12 student-athletes I would have normally gotten to interview and write about.

But if it’s been tough on me not having games to report on and thus form the foundation of my stories, I can’t imagine how tough it has been for you to work through your challenges at a time when we have annually celebrated your age group.

And so i hope you will take my call next year when I check in on you to see how your university sports careers are unfolding.

With that said, it’s back to work.

I hope the 2021 B.C. recruits list is our largest ever, and that in some small way it can help us all celebrate the amazing community we have right here within our province’s high school and university sports community.

I think a good friend of Varsity Letters summed it up best with a recent Tweet.

And once again: If you want to send further names for the list, remember: We need name, sport, high school, position, height and post-secondary destination. Please DO NOT forget the position or the height, or I’ll have to come find you. Send your information to howardtsumura@gmail.com

If you’re reading this story or viewing these photos on any website other than one belonging to a university athletic department, it has been taken without appropriate permission. In these challenging times, true journalism will survive only through your dedicated support and loyalty. VarsityLetters.ca and all of its exclusive content has been created to serve B.C.’s high school and university sports community with hard work, integrity and respect. Feel free to drop us a line any time at howardtsumura@gmail.com.

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