BURNABY — Finding a way to most accurately describe the loss of the entire 2020-21 high school sports season in B.C. is at once an impossible challenge.Instead, Robbie Puni offered his observations.“We’re seeing a lot of kids without a team walking through the hallways, and some are carrying a basketball or a volleyball,” the longtime […]
High School
Post-marked UFV: How GWG Grizzlies’ Grade 11 post Julia Tuchscherer will pivot into the paint with U Sports’ Cascades next season!
ABBOTSFORD — For about as long as Julia Tuchscherer can remember, she’s had a knack for making all of the numbers add up.She’s even done it in these challenging times, heading down the home stretch of her Grade 11 year at Chilliwack’s G.W. Graham Secondary with a 4.0 grade point average within a core of […]
RIP, Coach: For Pitt Meadows & STM’s Rich Goulet (1946-2021), basketball was his student, his teacher and the air that he’d breathe
PITT MEADOWS — On Sunday, on what would be the final day of a life so completely devoted to his greatest passion, Rich Goulet made a simple request.“Scoresheets. He was asking for scoresheets from a Grade 9 basketball tournament,” said his nephew Dave Goulet who was bedside at the hospital, tending to the needs of […]
A Sunday Read: Why do nicknames matter? The origin story of Vancouver’s Lord Byng Grey Ghosts!
VANCOUVER — The best high school nicknames have always carried an understated power.In just a word or two, they offer not only an instant connection across the generations, but a way of paying homage to unique histories and traditions that each can so proudly call its own.In fact at their very best, they are so […]
Nicknames, nicknames: We’ve got the nicknames (of almost) every high school in B.C. right here!
Somewhere in my head is reserved a sacred space for not just my favourite high school teams of all time, but the ones with the best nicknames.In what started out as an early-pandemic project last March before going into a very extended hibernation, has today, a year later, emerged as something of a finished product.With […]
Invitation by nickname alone! Imagine a BC high school tourney just for Eagles, or Cougars, or Bears? Check out our list of the craziest invitational fields ever!
Eagles rule the roost when it comes to the single most popular nickname in all of B.C. high school sports.From Kitimat’s Mt. Elizabeth Eagles in the Northwest, to Surrey’s Johnston Heights Eagles in the south, a total of 15 of the 314 B.C. high schools we list nicknames for today, have the majestic winged-wonder installed […]
COMING SUNDAY: The history and the hilarity of B.C. high school sports nicknames, plus, our list of every school’s moniker reveals the most popular!
Hope you will join us Sunday when Varsity Letters unveils a three-part project, all centred around B.C. high school sports nicknames.We will not only provide our list of nicknames for every school in the province with at least one senior varsity team, we’ll explore one longtime school’s particularly unique nickname, explaining in the process how […]
Fifty years ago today, North Delta’s basketball Huskies became B.C.’s first-ever dual junior and senior boys champions
Fifty years ago today, on March 27, 1971, a pioneering double-double took place on the hardcourt at the Pacific Coliseum when the North Delta Huskies became the first boys basketball program in B.C. history to win both the junior and senior provincial crowns in the same season.The sweep was completed when the Huskies defeated the […]
Tsumura Basketball Invitational: Churchill, Seaquam, SMUS join girls draw as boys, girls 40-team field now official for December 2021!
LANGLEY — We are thrilled with the 40 teams who have now finalized their participation in this coming December’s 2021 boys and girls Tsumura Basketball Invitationals at the Langley Events Centre.(The full list of finalized teams is included at the bottom of this story)Yet what has us even more excited is the response we have […]
The Luyken Legacy: For UFV’s father-daughter duo of Anthony & Aieisha, building community through basketball is a lifelong calling!
ABBOTSFORD — Anthony and Aieisha Luyken are a father and daughter with a most special tie to the sport of basketball.Today, Varsity Letters is happy to help share, through the efforts of one of our founding partners, the Fraser Valley Cascades, the story of their incredible, life-defining love affair with the sport and its impact […]