The historic original basketball court at North Delta Secondary School lives on in the lives of those it has touched. (Photo graphic by Gabriel Lynn property of Varsity Letters 2021. All Rights Reserved)
Feature High School Boys Basketball

May the circle be unbroken: How North Delta’s original 1957 basketball court was rescued & re-purposed as a unifying symbol for Huskies old and new!

NORTH DELTA — Basketball’s centre-court circle.Within the dimensions of the sport’s time-honoured schematic, it’s always been the place where the narrative begins… that perfectly circular gathering point measuring a regulation 12 feet in diametre which never fails to welcome its two combatants to Act 1, Scene 1.And just like theatre’s most well-trodden stages, the passing […]

Fingers are crossed that high school basketball can make its comeback for the 2021-22 season, and with that, the return of the TBI at the LEC. (Photo by Howard Tsumura property of Varsity Letters 2021. All Rights Reserved)
Feature High School Boys Basketball High School Girls Basketball

Tsumura Basketball Invitational: Optimism rules as we set tentative Dec. 2021 dates for an LEC return! Here’s our list of 40 boys and girls teams!

LANGLEY — Hope springs eternal here with all of us behind the scenes at the Tsumura Basketball Invitational.While our annual two weeks of early-season ‘Welcome Back’ to the B.C. senior boys and girls basketball world was, of course, cancelled this past December due to the global pandemic, we here at the TBI have our fingers […]

Ty Rowell (left) of the Cal Baptist Lancers, and Fardaws Aimaq of the Utah Valley Wolverines, each had spectacular efforts to lead their respective teams to victories in NCAA Div. 1 Western Athletic Conference games played stateside on Friday. (Photos property of Cal Baptist Athletics and Utah Valley University Marketing 2020. All Rights Reserved)
Feature High School Boys Basketball

Rowell and Aimaq! B.C.’s one-two punch of ‘Ty and Daws’ each play starring roles Friday in the WAC as Cal Baptist, Utah Valley both get big W’s!

It was a Friday night in which B.C.’s best Div. 1 men’s basketball talent took a backseat to no one in the NCAA’s Western Athletic Conference.Point guard Ty Rowell keyed a game-changing 16-3 second-half run with nine of his 17 points, the Langley-Walnut Grove grad never leaving the floor on a night in which he […]

Chris Kennedy, a 1991 McNair Secondary grad, has coached basketball in B.C. since the 1987-88 season. The Superintendent of Schools for West Vancouver most recently guided Richmond's R.A. McMath Wildcats senior girls team. (Photo by Howard Tsumura property of VarsityLetters.ca 2020. All Rights Reserved)
Feature High School Boys Basketball High School Girls Basketball

VL Podcast 01.13.21: Author, author! Chris Kennedy takes his ‘Culture of Yes’ into its second decade with a message more relevant than ever

LANGLEY — Happy New Year. Our first podcast of 2021 features Chris Kennedy, Superintendent of Schools for West Vancouver, and a lifelong B.C. high school basketball coach. Kennedy’s popular blog Culture of Yes is now in its 11th year, and today the Richmond native stops by to engage our provincial audience with everything that the […]

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 […]

In February of 1952, Bill Russell (right, pictured in his USF days) came to B.C. with a touring California high school all-star team, playing teams like B.C. champion Duke of Connaught. Vancouver's John Oliver Secondary gym played host to one of the games. (Photo graphic by Gabriel Lynn property of VarsityLetters.ca 2020. All Rights Reserved)
Feature High School Boys Basketball University Men's Basketball

A SUNDAY READ: It’s no fable! In 1952, before his 11 NBA championship rings, a 17-year-old Bill Russell toured B.C. high schools and discovered his hoops identity!

Malcolm Reid had heard the story many, many basketball moons ago.Last week, the head coach of the Vernon Panthers’ senior boys basketball team recounted it to me, and just like the day he first heard it from a man named Dick Abbott, it almost sounded like a fable.Earlier this month, Abbott — the father-in-law of […]

Just nine days after facing each other in a pivotal Game 6 of the 1958 NBC Finals, Boston's Bob Cousy (left) and St. Louis' Bob Pettit opposed each other on the floor at UBC's War Memorial Gymnasium as part of the league's 21-game tour of non-NBA cities. Vancouver was the tour's only Canadian stop. (Photos copyright NBA Photo Library/NBAE via Getty Images. All Rights Reserved)
Feature High School Boys Basketball University Men's Basketball

A Sunday Read: In 1958, UBC hosted the greatest group of NBA talent in B.C. history! Here’s how 15 future Hall of Famers hit the parquet at War Memorial Gym!

VANCOUVER — Cloudy, sunny periods, scattered showers, and a chance of … a lifetime.Excuse my indulgences today as I supplement the weather forecast of a certain spring day here almost 63 years ago because through the gift of hindsight, it all seems especially apropos.April 21, 1958.That’s the day on which perhaps the most amazing collection […]

Stu Graham (front row, 15) and the rest of the North Delta Huskies pose 50 years ago with the spoils of victory. (Photo courtesy BCHSBBA 2020. All Rights Reserved)
Feature High School Boys Basketball University Men's Basketball

VL Podcast 12.10.20: Basketball B.C. prez Stu Graham on the culture of hoops in his early-1970s North Delta Huskies neighbourhood and beyond!

The Varsity Letters time machine spins the knobs and dials and heads back to the year 1971 to celebrate (a wee bit early) a very special 50th anniversary BC high school moment! Our guest? Basketball B.C. president Stu Graham has worn so many hats, and he brings the entire rack to the fore as he […]

Thirty years ago this month, UBC's J.D. Jackson (centre) played on the same floor at B.C. Place Stadium as UNLV superstars Stacey Augmon (left) and Larry Johnson. (Photo graphic by Gabriel Lynn property of Varsity Letters 2020. All Rights Reserved)
Feature High School Boys Basketball University Men's Basketball

A Sunday Read: Why Dec. 1, 1990 – the day the UNLV Rebels came to town – was the day Vancouver came of age as a basketball city!

VANCOUVER — I can still remember the day that the late, great Jim Taylor, the newspaper sports columnist of my youth and later a co-worker at The Province newspaper, invited me over to his Vancouver home so that I might conduct an interview for a feature story I wanted to write on him for my […]

Langley-Walnut Grove's Ty Rowell has come into his own as a redshirt junior with the Western Athletic Conference's Lancers. (Photo property of Cal Baptist Athletics 2020. All Rights Reserved)
Feature High School Boys Basketball University Men's Basketball

“Ty has one of the biggest hearts I’ve ever coached!” High praise as Walnut Grove’s Rowell drops 32 points in Cal Baptist’s OT loss to USC Trojans

Longtime followers of the B.C. high school basketball scene will remember how Ty Rowell had a penchant for sinking baskets that could take your breath away.On Wednesday, however, as the NCAA Div. 1 college hoops season continued its run of season-opening games, Rowell turned the trick on his biggest stage yet.Almost a full year after […]