By Howard Tsumura
Varsity Letters
BURNABY — Sophie Bergeron is fun to watch but almost impossible to describe.
And really, what could be better?
She arrived last season to the Simon Fraser Red Leafs as an athletic prodigy, yet proceeded to demonstrate the need for the kind of seasoning which was as much about the cerebral part of the game as it was the physical fundamentals.
From her propensity to commit fouls, to the mechanics of her three-point shot, to the release point of her lay-ups you might say that the purists have plenty to debate, yet all too often those details are dwarfed by the sheer size of her heart’s effort.
And on Saturday she led from that very place like never before, performing like one ready to ascend to a place among the NCAA Div. 2’s best defensive players.
As if shot out of a cannon, the 5-foot-9 sophomore guard and psychology major, as a part of her team’s 109-46 demolition of the visiting Alaska Nanooks, put forth a career-defining day.
The native of Saguenay, Que., set career highs with 30 points and 10 steals, the latter establishing a new program record over its 16-year NCAA tenure.
She also added nine rebounds leaving her just one carom shy of recording a triple-double.
“I was just playing, giving the best I can, and not counting anything,” said Bergeron after the game when asked if she had any idea she has stuffed the box score to the extent that she had, dishing a further five assists for good measure.
Bergeron came out of that game not only leading the GNAC in steals at 3.1 per game, her 58 total thefts currently have her sitting ninth overall in the NCAA Div. 2 national ranks, nine off the 67 steals of national leader Mia Kalich of Seton Hill.
Katie Lowen formerly held the NCAA-era steals record for the Red Leafs when she had nine in a non-conference game against Trinity Western back on Dec. 30, 2013. Tracy Huclack holds the all-time overall single-game record with 12, in a non-conference game against Winnipeg in the 1979-80 season. Other SFU players with nine steals in a game are Andrea Schnider against St. Martin’s on Jan. 30, 1991 and Kim McLeod against Central Washington Feb 19, 1994. The latter three marks were set during SFU’s playing days in the NAIA.
On Saturday (3 p.m., Carver Gym), the opposition gets a lot tougher when the Red Leafs (8-11, 3-5 GNAC) head south to Bellingham for the first leg of a home-and-away against their rivals and GNAC travel partners, the Western Washington Vikings (14-5, 6-2). The SFU men (5-13, 2-6) face the Vikings (8-11, 2-6) at 7:30 p.m. Western Washington makes a return trip to the West Gym on Feb. 21.
This Saturday’s contest affords yet another opportunity for Bergeron to refine her game in ways that keep her foul free, on the floor, and averaging 30-plus minutes per game. When all three go those boxes get checked, the ceiling on her game rises exponentially.
“Since I’ve been really young, I’ve been in foul trouble early in games,” she said of a trait which has not disappeared but has been significantly reduced this season. “I feel it’s always a challenge for me to be aggressive… to find the right moment to be aggressive.”
THE MIND REALLY MATTERS
Which brings us around to all things cerebral.
In her psychology classes, Bergeron majors in thinking.
And although she says she doesn’t yet find a lot of direct connections between her academic and athletic ‘curriculums’, she is quick to note that for her, basketball practice is just as cerebral an experience as her time in the classroom.
“I feel Langford is really… it’s the first time I have had a coach that is really going to help you with your mind, engaging us to really take care of that part,” says Bergeron of SFU women’s longtime head coach Bruce Langford. “He’s the best coach I’ve had because he will tell me the real things. I’ve missed a lot of bunnies and lay-ups and he’s told me. Like he’s going to tell me ‘You can’t finish, you have to work on that.’”
Over the years, Langford has made a habit of giving his players books that are tailored to the steps of the journey they have embarked upon as student-athletes.
The one that he gave to Bergeron was a copy of the 1974 Timothy Gallwey classic entitled ‘The Inner Game of Tennis’ which is not so much about the serve-and-volley game as it is about getting to know yourself better from the inside out.
Writes Gallwey on the book’s inner sleeve: “It is the thesis of this book that neither mastery nor satisfaction can be found in the playing of any game without the giving some attention to the relatively neglected skills of the inner game. This is the game that takes place in the mind of the player, and it is played against such obstacles as lapses in concentration, nervousness, self-doubt and self-condemnation. In short, it is played to overcome all habits of the mind which inhibit excellence in performance.”
THE ORIGIN STORY OF POUMON
Her teammates call her ‘Bergie’, but SFU head coach Bruce Langford has his own nickname for Sophie Bergeron.
“When I watched her and saw that energy, there was that whole notion of having a third lung,” he laughed. “Some say she had an extra lung because she had so much energy and that is what I saw when I watched her CEJEP games (for the Sainte-Foy Dynamiques).”
Langford wanted to call her ‘third lung’ in French, but settled instead for the shorter version of ‘lung’ and that is why he refers to her as ‘Poumon’.
“She’s so quick on defence that she surprises people that she’e even there,” Langford explains. “It’s like ‘where did she come from?’”
Yet Langford knows her path well, beginning with the time her father Sylvain brought her and her friend all the way from Quebec to Burnaby Mountain for a Simon Fraser summer basketball camp over the summer holiday between Bergeron’s Grade 8 and 9 years.
Red Leafs assistant coach Marie-Line Petit, a former SFU player who prepped at the same CEJEP de Sainte-Foy as Bergeron, then paid a recruiting visit to her old school during Bergeron’s second season there.
“We stayed in contact and I wanted to be sure because it was far from home, but I was ready to be here,” said Bergeron, who says she has found a second family atop the mountain.
The rest of her SFU journey?
It’s not even half over, and the best part for Bergeron is that she’s just now starting to come into her own in a space in which grudging leeway has been both earned and given to the more unconventional aspects of her game, like her long-range shot.
“When she shoots the three, I don’t know why it goes in, but it’s starting to,” acknowledged Langford of Bergeron’s 31.3 per cent long-range accuracy in GNAC play.
“Her mechanics are really different but she has a pretty nice touch, surprisingly,” he continued. “We worked hard for year to change it a bit, and it worked really well in practice but not in games. This year she’s sitting at it being enough that you go ‘Okay, well, how badly do you want to get into her mind, right?”
Not an out-and-out truce, but perhaps a little reverse psychology… in a good way?
For her part, Sophie Bergeron is responding in all the right ways.
Her foul rate per minute played is down substantially from last season. Without getting into all of the minutiae, if you project the numbers over 40 minutes of play per game, she is committing fewer fouls at a rate of 2.01 per contest.
Ask Bergeron a general question about all of that, and she says its because of the mindset she’s been allowed to carry.
“Langford is funny with that,” she begins. “Sometimes coaches tell you after three fouls ‘Stay calm, be less aggressive’ but he’s telling me just go until (you get) four, and after that, we’re gonna live with it. So I’m doing that.”
It’s like we said off the top: Sophie Bergeron is fun to watch but almost impossible to describe.
And really, what could be better?
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Really nice story about Sophie Bergeron, Howard.