LANGLEY — They are the kinds of numbers which, through the real-life rigours of a cancelled COVID campaign, seem even more distant and faded than they really are.Yet ask Trinity Western women’s head basketball coach Cheryl Jean-Paul about the early signposts she has spotted with her Spartans’ club in the formative stages of the Canada […]
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Have goal, will travel: Trinity Western’s 26-hour marathon trip to U SPORTS soccer nationals in Nova Scotia mirrors Spartans’ own game-day resiliency along their journey!
Coming off 2020’s cancelled season and into a new one in which the norm has been to expect the unexpected, its perhaps no surprise to learn that despite a cross-country flight filled with folly, that the Canada West women’s soccer champions from Trinity Western University have arrived in Nova Scotia, stirringly unshaken, to battle for […]
Happy 70th birthday, Bruce Langford! The amazing journey of Simon Fraser’s ageless women’s basketball coach!
BURNABY MOUNTAIN — Ask Bruce Langford how many more seasons he is planning on coaching the Simon Fraser women’s basketball team, and instead of providing a direct answer, he quotes his wife Leslie.“When we go out to dinner with couples our age, they all bring up this ‘When is Bruce going to retire?’ stuff,’” Langford […]
UBC Football 2021: Gutted by playoff loss to Huskies, Birds’ coach Nill won’t skip steps that turns young team’s cache of promise & talent into its fully-realized potential!
The 2021 Canada West football season revealed a level of promise within the ranks of the UBC Thunderbirds that is darn near impossible to ignore.Yet in the immediate aftermath of a season-ending 39-17 loss Saturday afternoon in the Canada West’s Hardy Cup semifinals to the host Saskatchewan Huskies, ‘Birds head coach Blake Nill wasn’t about […]
SFU men’s basketball opens with win at CCAA/GNAC Challenge: Simon Fraser shows a new defensive edge in victory over Cal State-Dominguez Hills Toros!
It’s been so long since the Simon Fraser men’s basketball team last played an actual game that they were bound to look a little different than their past selves.The Burnaby Mountain crew which debuted Friday night at the CCAA/GNAC Challenge in Carson, CA., however, was at first glance, a lot different.“We have changed a lot […]
UBC and the Hardy Cup playoffs: Despite its role as big road underdogs vs. No. 4 Saskatchewan Huskies, opportunity knocks Saturday for these young, untethered Thunderbirds!
VANCOUVER — With the ink still just five days dry on a what has been for them a revelatory regular season, the UBC Thunderbirds are being talked about in Canada West football circles as a team of tomorrow.Yet for a 3-3 team which was a fourth-quarter away from opening its six-game conference slate at 0-3, […]
TSUMURA ON UBC FOOTBALL: A reporter’s reflections on ‘Birds playoff-clinching win over Alberta, plus who’s in line for this week’s Game Balls?
VANCOUVER — A reporter’s reflections on a great day at the old ball yard on Saturday, watching the UBC Thunderbirds finish their six-game Canada West season by getting into the Hardy Cup playoffs with a dramatic, do-or-die 30-27 victory over the Alberta Golden Bears at Thunderbird Stadium.And all of this, of course, not possible unless […]
SFU Volleyball 2021: With Seniors Night weekend on tap, who knew that Simon Fraser’s ‘X’ factor would be it’s well-hidden group of third-year freshmen!
BURNABY — When the Simon Fraser volleyball team finally de-camped from its endless months of limited practice inside the West Gym and eventually stepped off a plane in California over the first week of September to open its 2021 season, who knew that its X factor would be its inexperience?Huh?“When you have all of these […]
A SUNDAY READ: In Simon Fraser’s Saturday loss at Western Oregon, we examine the ripple effect of three snaps, no reward and a young team’s search for momentum
It’s impossible to encapsulate all the moments which, when taken as a whole, add up to that most fleeting of sports intangibles: Momentum.The Simon Fraser football team has been attempting to find as much of it as it can with the hope that it will help lead them in the direction of their most elusive […]
Playoffs hang in the balance! After horrific start in Calgary dooms ‘Birds in 53-14 loss, UBC needs a home finale win vs. Alberta, and likely a little help!
It didn’t take too long to reason on Saturday that the same youthful UBC Thunderbirds football team which had so convincingly flipped the fortunes of its 2021 Canada West campaign over a rags-to-riches two-week span, was perhaps suffering from a kind of collective swoon, the kind most commonly associated with too rapid a rise in […]