Simon Fraser head women's basketball coach Bruce Langford reached the 500-win milestone on Saturday with a win over Western Washington. (Photo by Howard Tsumura property of VarsityLetters.ca 2019. All Rights Reserved)
Feature University Women's Basketball

Bruce Langford: Simon Fraser women’s head basketball coach reaches 500-win milestone with Seniors’ Night win over WWU! “Who would have thought a 51-year-old high school coach could get 500 wins? Not me!”

BURNABY MOUNTAIN — It was about two years ago that Bruce Langford decided to make a donation.Just ahead of his 70th birthday, Simon Fraser’s longtime women’s basketball coach decided to pay forward his own hoops education by packing up his 100 or so coaching books and manuals so that the impressionable minds of the future […]

SFU Red Leafs' guard Aram Dulai (right) with former teammate Sophie Klassen during the 2022-23 season. (Photo by Gordon Kalisch property of FastTrackSportsPhotography and SFU athletics 2024. All Rights Reserved)
SFU Red Leafs' guard Arman Dulai is the first women's basketball player in SFU's NCAA era to earn a spot in the team's starting line-up as a walk-on player. (Photo by Gordon Kalisch property of FastTrackSportsPhotography and SFU athletics 2024. All Rights Reserved)
Feature University Women's Basketball

SFU women’s basketball: Arman Dulai puts her stamp on Red Leafs’ red-letter day as first walk-on starter in team’s NCAA era!

BURNABY — When it comes to beating the odds during this current decade-plus NCAA era of Simon Fraser women’s basketball, Arman Dulai may well have everyone beat.When the 5-foot-9 junior guard from Surrey found out that she was going to be announced in the starting line-up for this past Saturday’s home game against Seattle Pacific, […]

Behind a 36-point performance, SFU senior Jessica Wisotzki led her team to a win over Minnesota Moorhead at the West Gym, it was the team's fifth straight victory. (Photo by Wilson Wong property of Simon Fraser athletics 2023. All Rights Reserved)
Feature University Women's Basketball

For Simon Fraser’s Jessica Wisotzki, a new single-game scoring standard caps five-game win streak, Red Leafs’ star senior also says ‘sharing the rock’ with sister Sophia part of ‘…a special bond!’

By Howard Tsumura(This story appeared in its original form at athletics.SFU.ca Re-printed here via kind permission of Simon Fraser athletics)BURNABY — The Simon Fraser women’s basketball team opened its season with three straight losses on B.C. soil during the recent CCA Div. 2 Canadian Tip-Off Classic, inviting questions as to just how long it was […]

Her combined two-point, three-point and free throw percentage numbers put Simon Fraser's Jessica Wisotzki in a rare category of shooters as the Red Leafs set to open GNAC play Saturday against Western Washington at the West Gym. (Photo by Paul Yates property of Simon Fraser athletics 2022. All Rights Reserved)
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She’s 196 per cent Wiz! It all adds up for Simon Fraser’s Jessica Wisotzki who is “…shooting the three better than anyone we have ever had” Red Leafs set for GNAC opener against WWU Vikings!

BURNABY MOUNTAIN — Steve Nash, Reggie Miller, Mark Price, Steve Kerr… and Jessica Wisotzki.Huh?The numbers never lie, and on a Thursday morning ahead of his team’s Great Northwest Athletic Conference season-opener this Saturday at home to the powerhouse Western Washington Vikings, Simon Fraser Red Leafs’ veteran head coach Bruce Langford is asked the impossible: Can […]

Fraser Valley's Deanna Tuchscherer and the rest of the Cascades have their highest national ranking in a decade this week at No. 2 in the latest U SPORTS national poll. (Photo by Tanner Geringer property of UFV Cascades athletics 2022. All Rights Reserved)
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Made-in-B.C. and ranked No. 2 in the nation! Here’s three big reasons the Fraser Valley Cascades could be Bronze Baby contenders!

ABBOTSFORD — Ten years after, there’s a new band of basketball teammates shining the spotlight on the Cascades’ women’s basketball program at the University of the Fraser Valley.Precisely one decade after its most successful Canada West regular season, one it which it went 18-4 and was perched wire-to-wire within the top four of the U […]

Muscling her way to the basket, Simon Fraser's Sophie Klassen, a Sardis Secondary grad, has enjoyed a confidence-building junior season atop Burnaby Mountain. (Photo by Paul Yates property of SFU athletics 2022. All Rights Reserved)
Feature University Women's Basketball

The energy of Sophie Klassen: ACL surgery left Simon Fraser forward wondering if she had “…lost what makes me, me,” yet her crash-and-bang DNA impossible to miss!

BURNABY — Ask Sophie Klassen what was worse than the COVID-cancelled 2020-21 university basketball season, and she doesn’t hesitate to answer.“I tore my ACL last season, in September (of 2020), just a couple of weeks into practices,” Simon Fraser’s energetic 6-foot redshirt junior forward begins. “I got surgery in November, and I wasn’t completely sure […]

Simon Fraser rookie forward Gemma Cutler has held her own on the offensive glass with the elite of the GNAC this season. Here, she battles with Central Washington's fifth-year senior standout Kassidy Malcolm. (Photo by Paul Yates property of SFU athletics 2022. All Rights Reserved)
Feature University Women's Basketball

Simon Fraser forward Gemma Cutler does it by the book, but the 6-foot-2 rookie from North Vancouver also writing her own chapters atop Burnaby Mountain!

BURNABY — When it comes to being a voracious student of the sport of basketball, you could say that Gemma Cutler wrote the book.Or perhaps, in the case of Simon Fraser’s ultra-inquisitive rookie forward, it’s more accurate to say she digested it in its entirety.That’s the idea you get when you ask SFU head coach […]

Terry Fox senior point guard Cerys Merton has been there to give her team a helping hand throughout her entire high school basketball career. (Photo by Howard Tsumura property of Varsity Letters 2021. All Rights Reserved)
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A Sunday Read: What defines the heart of Terry Fox’s UBC-bound point guard Cerys Merton? “She never turns down a battle!”

PORT COQUITLAM — Cerys Merton was born with a drive that needs no ignition.And these days, as we hit the stretch drive to the B.C. senior girls basketball championships, it’s a most fitting way to describe the energy and the presence that the Terry Fox Ravens’ senior point guard brings each time she sets foot […]

Bringing focus to team basketball, UFV Cascades' veteran forward Natalie Rathler (centre with ball) locks eyes with hard-cutting teammate Alexis Worrell during a game against the TWU Spartans. The 8-1 teams meet for a pair this weekend in Abbotsford. (Photo by Gibi Saini property of University of the Fraser Valley athletics 2021. All Rights Reserved)
Feature University Women's Basketball

Cascades thriving on its “one tough shot” mantra! Canada West’s top defence keys empowering ripple effect as 8-1 UFV hosts 9-1 TWU in weekend summit series!

ABBOTSFORD — It’s an axiom which has echoed through countless Fraser Valley Cascades’ women’s basketball practices over the 20 years in which Al Tuchscherer has served as the program’s head coach.This season, however, you could say in a figurative sense that those echoes have become deafening.“We always say that we want to give teams one […]

Trinity Western first-year guard Shemaiah Abatayo, continually looking to take her game to another level, gets the toughest test of her season Thursday. Abatayo's 8-0 Spartans entertain the 7-1 Fraser Valley Cascades at the Langley Events Centre. (Photo by Mark Janzen property of Trinity Western athletics 2021. All Rights Reserved)
Feature University Women's Basketball

B.C. women’s hoops game of the year! It’s 8-0 Trinity Western against 7-1 Fraser Valley in what’s shaping up as a classic clash Thursday night at the LEC!

LANGLEY — They are historic geographic rivals dating back to their days on the provincial college circuit when the British Columbia Collegiate Athletic Association was perhaps the longest league moniker in all of North American post-secondary sports.And they’ve spent a good long time building up their respective programs since moving up to U SPORTS.Yet on […]