Simon Fraser's fourth-year sophomore slinger Justin Seiber heated up late as a ray lof light at Linfield on Saturday for the winless SFU football team. (Photo property of Linfield athletics 2021. All Rights Reserved)
Feature University Football

As Simon Fraser suffers bleak loss at Linfield, super-soph QB Justin Seiber comes out of mothballs to show he’s still got the shine

Hey Justin Seiber, welcome back.Simon Fraser football fans hearty enough to follow their heroes into the second half of Saturday’s disappointing 56-20 road loss in Oregon to the Div. 3 Linfield Wildcats were no doubt looking for something to hang their hats on.And so amidst the expected fault lines of youth which have clearly been […]

They first met in 1993 at Trinity Western when Rob Giesbrecht (right) was a third-year player and Graham Roxburgh a first-year men's assistant coach. Twenty-eight years later, their friendship endures as the pair reunite for the 2021 Canada West season. (Photo by Scott Stewart property of Trinity Western athletics 2021. All Rights Reserved)
Feature University Men's Soccer

TWU women’s soccer 2021: Seventeen years after an historic run to 2004 national title, Giesbrecht, Roxburgh re-unite Friday on Chase Field sidelines as Spartans open new season!

LANGLEY — Graham Roxburgh and Rob Giesbrecht first met on the practice pitch at Trinity Western University more than a quarter-century ago.And ever since crossing paths in their early 20’s, they’ve not only worked together, they’ve just spent the past decade scheming against each other.Along their parallel journeys, the pair formed a bond as soccer […]

Olivia Willett (centre, 283) is both a returning senior and foundational leader on the NCAA's No. 11-ranked Div. 2 women's cross-country team, one set to return to the trails Friday in San Francisco. (Photo provided courtesy SFU athletics 2021. All Rights Reserved)
Feature University Cross Country

Simon Fraser cross-country 2021 returns Friday to its Happy Trails! Says coach Townsend: “Once you get back on the course, everything’s the same… you compete”

BURNABY — Happy Trails.It’s a song much too dated to register anything resembling a pulse from today’s generation of student-athletes.Yet as cross-country runners at every rank of the NCAA, including those competing at the Div. 2 level at Simon Fraser University, prepare for the mass resumption of their competitive racing schedules this weekend, they might […]

Simon Fraser defensive end Tank Brewster's early sack of Idaho quarterback EJ Jordan produced a fumble that was recovered by SFU linebacker Griffin Barrett. (Photo property of Idaho Vandals' athletics 2021. All Rights Reserved)
Feature University Football

Simon Fraser football season opener: Head coach Mike Rigell candid after young team suffers resounding loss to Div. 1 Idaho Vandals!

Coming off a cancelled season and not having played a game for 658 days, the Simon Fraser football coaching staff knew that Saturday’s maiden test of its 2021 season was going to be like the first day of class in the school of hard knocks.Matched against the toughest foe it will face all season, Div. […]

Simon Fraser guard Christian 'Boots' Butenschoen (66) and the rest of the young Simon Fraser offensive line gets a stern test Saturday when it opens the season on the road against the NCAA Div. 1 FCS Idaho Vandals. (Photo by Paul Yates property of Vancouver Sports Pictures 2021. All Rights Reserved)
Feature University Football

After a lost 2020 season, Saturday’s kick-off at Idaho can’t come soon enough for ‘Boots’ Butenschoen and Simon Fraser’s young offensive line!

BURNABY — Christian Butenschoen is not buying all of this talk of youth being served along the trenches of perhaps the youngest offensive line in all of NCAA D2 football.“Even though we’re young, the chemistry there is looking good right now,” the team’s 6-foot-3, 290 pound sophomore left guard out of Bellingham High explained earlier […]

SFU's Steve Hanson (right) and UBC's Kevin Hanson may not be related, but the two men's head basketball coaches are linked through the programs they guide and the depth of history their programs share. On Nov. 20, after six years on the shelf, the two will lead their teams into a Buchanan Cup showdown as part of the SFU Showdown atop Burnaby Mountain. (Photos by Richard Lam and Howard Tsumura property of UBC athletics and Varsity Letters 2021. All Rights Reserved)
Feature University Men's Basketball

Simon Fraser vs. UBC: The classic men’s B.C. university basketball rivalry is re-born! Mark down Nov. 20 at SFU for a rowdy Buchanan Cup tip-off!

BURNABY — For once in a long while the basketball stars at Simon Fraser and UBC have aligned.The end result?The Lower Mainland’s longest standing men’s basketball rivals have agreed to make Saturday, Nov. 20 the date for the resumption of the classic Buchanan Cup series, this edition seeing the Thunderbirds traveling up Burnaby Mountain to […]

SFU cornerback Jerrell Cunmmings, pictured during Tuesday's 2021 fall training camp practice at Fox Field, has developed into a game-changing talent within the Great Northwest Athletic Conference. (Photo by Howard Tsumura property of Varsity Letters 2021. All Rights Reserved)
Feature High School Football University Football

SFU Football opener 2021: Now that he’s turned a corner, Jerrell Cummings is ready to roar as the heart-and-soul leader in Simon Fraser’s defensive secondary!

BURNABY — Jerrell Cummings was all of 17 years of age when he suited up for his first Simon Fraser fall football camp.With the start of the 2021 season coming this Saturday afternoon (1 p.m.) at the FCS Div. 1 Idaho Vandals, it’s amazing when you consider how far, over the course of two adversity-filled […]

Back in 1981, SFU opened its season in Idaho against the Vandals with a young Jay Prepchuk at quarterback. On Saturday, exactly 40 years to the weekend, SFU will open in 2021 campaign statside against the very same team, this time with Prepchuk serving as the program's new quarterbacks coach. (Photo property SFU athletics 2021. All Rights Reserved)
Feature University Football

Forty years after starting at quarterback in SFU’s 1981 season-opener at Idaho, new QB coach Jay Prepchuk helps his alma mater go back to the future on Saturday!

BURNABY MOUNTAIN — Jay Prepchuk turned 60 on Sunday, but he has spent a lot of his time channeling his former 20-year-old self this week.Prepchuk, Simon Fraser’s first-year quarterbacks coach, is of course the school’s former record-setting quarterback from the early 1980s, a homegrown North Vancouver-Handsworth product who left the school having set virtually every […]

Displaying the gold medal she was awarded for her remote role with the Canadian women's soccer team is Fraser Valley Cascades striker Sarah Parker, a Surrey native and former graduate of Lord Tweedsmuir Secondary School. FIFA honoured Parker for her role in video creation for the Canadian women's soccer team on its run to gold at Tokyo 2020. (Photo by Dan Kinvig property of University of the Fraser Valley athletics 2021. All Rights Reserved)
Feature University Women's Soccer

A Sunday Read: How the camera eye of UFV’s Sarah Parker helped Canadian women’s soccer capture a golden moment in time!

ABBOTSFORD — For about as long as she can remember, Sarah Parker has felt a calling to capture moments in time.Whether as still life or moving pictures, she very quickly understood the effect images could have on the imagination, and how later, as an elite-level U Sports soccer player, the inspirational power they carried.“I love […]

UBC's Brad Richardson (top) and SFU's Niko Papakyriakopoulos were in dogged pursuit of a loose ball Friday as SFU hosted UBC at Fox Field. (Photo by Howard Tsumura property of Varsity Letters 2021. All Rights Reserved)
Feature University Men's Soccer

SFU vs. UBC: Friday’s men’s soccer derby clash at new Fox Field Stadium proves nothing has wilted in Lower Mainland’s oldest cross-town rivalry!

BURNABY — The Lower Mainland’s most enduring university men’s soccer rivalry unfolded Friday evening as it always has, and the best part of all? It had nothing to do with the final score.Simon Fraser against visiting UBC within the home team’s new stadium complex at Terry Fox Field, complete with an actual rousing crowd.“It’s massive,” […]