By Howard Tsumura
VarsityLetters.ca
LANGLEY — On the eve of her team’s participation in the season-opening Canadian Tip-Off Classic earlier this month, Rachel Loukes thought long and hard about how her Simon Fraser Red Leafs were being labelled as a working-class basketball team.
And when the three-day event concluded on Nov. 2 at the Langley Events Centre following SFU’s gritty 68-62 win over North Dakota’s Minot State Beavers, the team’s standout junior scoring guard was more than happy to explain why.
“I read the article saying that we were a blue-collar team, and it really resonated with me,” said the former Prince George-College Heights grad Rachel Loukes, whose game-high 20 points that night carried a significantly higher exchange rate given the game’s physical, grinding and low-scoring nature.
“I love the mindset we have on this team, and I look around at every player and every player wants it, and that makes me really happy,” she added, as SFU rallied from losses the previous two nights to Wisconsin-Parkside (61-50) and No. 21-ranked Colorado Mesa (61-54). “And I love that everyone’s just equally contributing in different ways. It makes it really fun. You saw it out there. It’s just so exciting and fun to play that way, and you can tell that everybody really wants it and gets after it.”
It was a season-opening weekend, however, that was not without its share of disappointments.
The Red Leafs had been on the court together just seven minutes into its first game before its key senior transfer post, 6-foot-3 Gwen Aasland, was helped off the floor after taking the worst of a knee-on-knee collision in the paint.
In that instant, an entire preseason’s worth of organization shifted into a a kind of improvised shuffle, one that tweaked some of its systems and re-invented others.
Bottom line?
If you’re a team that is going to have that kind of luck that early to a player who was being looked upon as a true cornerstone, well, the more blue-collar you are the better.
And from that point forward, head coach Bruce Langford saw a level of fight in his team that wound up as the weekend’s defining theme.
“I thought there was a bit of improvement each night for sure,” Langford said after the Minot State game. “I mean, we only gave up 61, 61 and 62, so defensively I thought we created enough chaos and that we were able to keep scores at a reasonable rate.”
Langford told Varsity Letters on Monday morning, as his team prepared for its first action of the season since the Canadian Tip-Off this weekend in California, that Aasland is not experiencing any pain in her knee, however she has not yet returned to practice.
Of course her return will add another dimension of control and efficiency through her possession-based abilities at both ends of the floor.
The biggest takeaway, however, is the level of understanding that now seems imbedded in the roster when it comes to how the Red Leafs need to play to win.
And it’s encouraging that from its leadership group, that understanding is so easily translated.
Ask Loukes about it and that seems crystal clear.
“I enjoy it because it’s something that we can control a lot,” she says, defining the very meaning of effort in the process. “I talked about that in my little pregame speech, that we’ve got to focus on what we can control. They’re gonna do what they’re gonna do, but we know what we can do and we’ve got to play like that. So I’m honestly not to upset about it, being a blue collar team, because I know that everybody here wants to be here, and I know that everybody wants to give it their all. So I think it’s great that it’s something we can control on the court.”
The Red Leafs’ debut confirmed just how important Loukes and second-year guard/forward Sophie Bergeron would be to the fortunes of the team this season.
While Loukes was doing her thing, so was the 5-foot-9 sophomore Bergeron, whose game has taken another step forward in terms of her explosiveness, the control she is bringing to her physicality and the growth she is showing in her shooting range (7-of-22 3-pt, 32 per cent over the three games).
“(She) missed a few shots early, but she kept shooting her shot and she finally hit some, but more importantly, she has the hardest job defensively on our team,” said Langford, “and she didn’t foul out today. She got her fourth. She said ‘I’ll be good, I’ll be careful’ but she still played hard. So there were a lot of good signs.”
Added Loukes: “Bergie is super, super fun to play with and her work ethic is just contagious… for everyone. She gets everyone excited and it’s kind of like a domino effect.”
There were more than a few other good signs, and you can’t help but start with Bree Neufeld.
Following Aasland’s injury in the first game, the Red Leafs went with a four-guard lineup to flank the versatile forward Rilyn Quirke the rest of the way, with Neufeld moving into the starting quartet of guards with Loukes, Bergeron and transfer point guard Zoe Sharpe.
And for Langford, the decision was based on more than the obvious.
Yes, Neufeld has invested much off-season time into her shot and her shot-taking process, and it’s starting to show as she dials into the consistency of its release.
But she’s also got an X factor and a hustle quotient which has added up to a statistical anomaly in the painted areas.
“I threw her in because of her rebounding,” the head coach explained of the 5-foot-8 redshirt sophomore guard from Abbotsford-MEI who is not only second on the team at 5.7 boards per game, but tied with Loukes and Haley de Walle for the team lead in steals (six). “She is a tenacious rebounder. She must be averaging six boards a game.”
And then there was the play of 6-foot-1 freshman forward Alyssa Buwalda, who went into the weekend as Aasland’s apprentice but wound up providing key minutes as a physical half-court anchor in the deep paint alongside her more veteran teammate Quirke, who herself seems on the cusp of much great offensive productivity.
“Who thought Alyssa Buwalda was going to come in and look so good?” Langford said proudly of the Calgary Christian product whose 21 minutes against Minot State were played out to a general consensus of critical acclaim. “Buwalda comes in and she’s our leading plus-minus of the game (+11). Who would have thought? She was good on the board. She’s raw, but we should be solid.”
It didn’t stop there.
The aforementioned de Walle dished nine assists in her three games as showed comfort in her 24 mpg.
Another first-year player, 6-foot-2 forward Oceanne Paradis, has a huge ceiling, and the combination of her length and guard-based dexterity got a nice introduction through 19 minutes per game.
And then there was senior guard Anja Tjernagel, who despite her limited playing time, was clearly ready when Langford tapped her shoulder.
“I said, ‘Anja, you’ve been shooting the ball hot lately. Can you go out there and hit a three?” a happy Langford said of Tjernagel, who formerly played at Douglas College, and in her second season with the Red Leafs had not yet taken a shot in game action. “I said ‘Will you shoot the ball if you go out there?’ and she goes ‘Yeah’. So then she goes out and she hits two threes. Who would have thought?”
The Red Leafs have had to cool their heels a bit with no games in the week that followed the Canadian Tip-Off.
Now, however, it’s three straight weekends of double-header non-conference challengers.
The Red Leafs are in Santa Barbara on Friday and Saturday to face Westmont and Vanguard in a pair of 2 pm games.
That is followed by a trip to Billings, Mont., to clash with Adams State (4 p.m.) and Jamestown (11 a.m.) respectively Nov. 21 and 22.
On the Nov. 28-29 weekend, it’s off to Grand Junction, Colorado for a rematch with Colorado Mesa (4 p.m.) and then a matchup with Fort Lewis (11 a.m.).
SFU then begins the 2025-26 GNAC season on the road Dec. 3 and 5 against Seattle Pacific and Montana State Billings respectively.
Red Leafs also play at the Great Western Shoot-Out Dec. 19-20 against first New Mexico Highlands and then Eastern New Mexico, before returning home for its GNAC opener on New Year’s Day against St. Martin’s (7 p.m.) at the West Gym.
That’s plenty of time for the team’s blue collar mindset to continue its process of manifestation.
“My biggest thing was just leave it all out on the floor,” Loukes added after the Canadian Tip-Off. “We’ve got nothing to lose at this point, right? Like, we’re kind of the underdogs here, and I love just kind of driving our team with that mentality and just leaving it all on the floor diving for balls, getting rebounds. Those are things that we can control.”
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