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 […]
University Women’s Basketball
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 […]
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 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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
A trio of Ravens sign with Fraser Valley Cascades women’s basketball: Misic, Weloy, Clements chart their Canada West futures together!
LANGLEY — In announcing on Thursday the signing of three players from the B.C. Quad-A No. 1-ranked Terry Fox Ravens senior girls basketball team, Fraser Valley Cascades head coach Al Tuchscherer was posed a question whose answer would speak best to the total impact of incoming the trio.If you were coaching a three-on-three team of […]
Jessica Wisotzki: How the simple game of one-on-one helped show Simon Fraser’s super sophomore the way to unlock her true scoring talents!
BURNABY MOUNTAIN — Sometimes simple works best. Just ask Jessica Wisotzki.As the Simon Fraser women’s basketball teams continues preparation this week for its Great Northwest Athletic Conference opener Saturday (7 p.m.) in Bellingham against its arch rivals, the Western Washington Vikings, perhaps you have noticed a defined uptick in the sophomore guard-forward’s scoring numbers throughout […]
Off to a perfect 4-0 start, Trinity Western Spartans women’s hoops reaps rewards of studious work during 2020’s cancelled campaign!
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 […]