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 […]
University
Fardaws Aimaq: From Steveston-London to the top of the NCAA D-1 rebounding charts at Utah Valley…is the NBA next for B.C.’s rising 6-foot-11 star?
Look up… look way up!Okay B.C. basketball fans, do you see that name right at the very tip-top of the list of the leading rebounders this season for all of NCAA Div. 1 men’s basketball?In case you were wondering just where the winding basketball roads had taken Fardaws Aimaq ever since the 6-foot-11 centre took […]
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 […]
There’s a name for that dream! Carihi Tyees’ Emoni Bush, B.C. Girls Volleyball 2020-21 Player of the Year, takes her golden spike to Pac 12’s UW Huskies!
Ask Emoni Bush to trace the origins of her unique given name, and the senior volleyball standout with Campbell River’s Carihi Tyees delivers her answer with an appropriate hint of joyous wonder.“What I’ve heard is that it came to my dad in a dream,” says Bush.Trace the journey she has made in the sport over […]
He makes time stand still! Vernon Christian’s Liam Remple, B.C. boys volleyball 2020-21 Player of the Year, brings gift of flight to TWU Spartans
Liam Remple has inhaled the rare air of his sport enough times to have gained a critical appreciation of how sweet the view can be almost 12 feet off the ground.“It’s pretty crazy up there, I’m not going to lie” laughed Remple, the high-flying 6-foot-7 Vernon Christian volleyball star during a phone interview earlier this […]
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 […]
The singular focus of Ben Kolb: VC Fighting Irish’s UBC-bound kicker wears his ‘thinking cap’ inside his helmet as BCHSF’s 2020 Academic Player of Year!
VANCOUVER — Whether he’s wearing a football helmet or just his plain, old thinking cap, Ben Kolb is a study in focus.“I do think there are a lot of similarities between challenging classes and the pressure you experience on the football field,” the senior kicker/punter with the Vancouver College Fighting Irish explained Thursday over the […]
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 […]
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 […]
Delivering a fine kettle of fish! Simon Fraser’s women’s basketball hits the dock of Steveston Harbour to support ‘Fishermen Helping Kids with Cancer’ cause!
BURNABY — They were hoping to hit nothing but net when they took to their cozy West Gym court nestled high atop Burnaby Mountain this season.Yet while the global pandemic put a quick end to those aspirations for the Simon Fraser women’s basketball team, they’ve still found ways to cast their net far and wide.This […]