ABBOTSFORD — For about as long as Julia Tuchscherer can remember, she’s had a knack for making all of the numbers add up.She’s even done it in these challenging times, heading down the home stretch of her Grade 11 year at Chilliwack’s G.W. Graham Secondary with a 4.0 grade point average within a core of […]
University Women’s Basketball
A Sunday Read: SFU women’s basketball celebrates the power of connection, uniting past and present through its IMPACT mentorship program!
BURNABY — There are many variations of the parable which informs us that in learning we teach, and that in teaching we learn.Boil those words down to their essence, however, and what remains is the singular feeling of a journey coming full circle.Laura Kalenuik, née van den Boogaard, like so many other former student-athletes, has […]
The Luyken Legacy: For UFV’s father-daughter duo of Anthony & Aieisha, building community through basketball is a lifelong calling!
ABBOTSFORD — Anthony and Aieisha Luyken are a father and daughter with a most special tie to the sport of basketball.Today, Varsity Letters is happy to help share, through the efforts of one of our founding partners, the Fraser Valley Cascades, the story of their incredible, life-defining love affair with the sport and its impact […]
Sage Stobbart: Seycove’s former B.C. AA MVP turns her shot-blocking/three-point shooting skills into a sweet science with D1 UC Davis Aggies!
As an environmental sciences major at UC Davis, Sage Stobbart is gaining an ecological understanding that makes her feel more at home than ever in the great outdoors.Yet ask the redshirt junior forward about the other side of her life as a student-athlete, that of the agile and versatile 6-foot-3 junior forward with the Aggies’ […]
A Sunday Read: The origin story of Victoria’s Sophie de Goede! At 21, Canada’s rising rugby superstar makes her mark with London’s Saracens
Last October, as she packed her rugby bags pre-flight for what was to be an extended overseas professional residency in the birthplace of her sport, Sophie de Goede made sure to leave a little room for the other half of her athletic alter-ego.“I brought my basketball shoes over, hoping that I would be able to […]
UBC’s Gabrielle Laguerta: Despite her battle scars and lost senior season, ‘Birds senior celebrates the silver lining of basketball’s shared experience
VANCOUVER —As Gabrielle Laguerta has gone about playing her role in the strangest year of our lives, UBC’s fifth-year senior guard has so often felt like an actor rehearsing her lines for a Broadway production she knows will never see the light of opening night.“I’ll come off a good practice where I’ve tried out this […]
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 […]
VL Podcast 11.25.20: Canadian coaching great Allison McNeill reflects on a hoops life with stops at Oregon, Semiahmoo, Laurentian, SFU and more!
This week, the Varsity Letters podcast welcomes a giant in Canadian basketball circles. Allison McNeill has touched the stars at every level at which she has played or coached, and today we cover some of the facets of her basketball life that don’t get as much attention! But first, we will talk with Coach […]
A SUNDAY READ: Banking their Euros! Postmarked ‘Abby, BC’, UFV’s teen duo of Tuchscherer & Gobeil find their bounce with overseas pro careers
ABBOTSFORD — It was a basketball migration along a flight path neither could have ever anticipated just a handful of months ago.Yet this past Thursday, as both U SPORTS and its conference affiliate, Canada West, announced the official cancellation of the remainder of the 2020-21 university sports season (including basketball) due to the ongoing virulence […]
Trinity Western women’s basketball: Veteran coach Cheryl Jean-Paul keeps her youthful Spartans on a proven path to Canada West success
LANGLEY — There is a virtual mountain of statistical evidence to illustrate just how unforgiving a season the young Trinity Western women’s basketball team endured in 2019-20.The good part for the Spartans is that head coach Cheryl Jean-Paul has been through this tough, early part of the journey before with her program, and its precisely […]