Welcome to the latest edition of the Varsity Letters podcast. Today we chat with longtime basketball referee Karn Dhillon on a variety of topics spanning a career that began not too soon after he graduated from Vancouver’s Sir Winston Churchill in the late 1970s. Dhillon also eulogizes his friend, longtime and well-loved referee Felix Gonzalez […]
Tag: bc girls high school basketball
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 […]
Tsumura Basketball Invitational: Optimism rules as we set tentative Dec. 2021 dates for an LEC return! Here’s our list of 40 boys and girls teams!
LANGLEY — Hope springs eternal here with all of us behind the scenes at the Tsumura Basketball Invitational.While our annual two weeks of early-season ‘Welcome Back’ to the B.C. senior boys and girls basketball world was, of course, cancelled this past December due to the global pandemic, we here at the TBI have our fingers […]
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 […]
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 […]
Makenna Jacklin: She’s not just a post player! OKM’s 6-foot-1 star works to extend game beyond arc ahead of NCAA D-1 career with Idaho Vandals
LANGLEY — If Makenna Jacklin has her druthers, the trajectory of her NCAA Div. 1 basketball career is going to follow a script similar to the one she so dramatically penned en route to helping her Okanagan Mission Huskies beat East Vancouver’s Britannia Bruins in the championship final of last December’s Tsumura Basketball Invitational at […]
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 […]
Terry Fox’s Karin Khuong loses two-year battle with cancer, coach Carkner says her “courageous, fearless” influence continues to propel her Ravens
PORT COQUITLAM — Karin Khuong’s indomitable spirit has always been a vital part of the DNA of the Terry Fox Ravens’ senior girls basketball team.
Twenty teams for TBI 2020! Our roster for the annual senior girls Tsumura Basketball Invitational features B.C.’s best of the best!
LANGLEY — Our collective fingers are crossed with the hope that a safe fall and winter season is on the horizon for high school sports in the province of B.C.And in the spirit of that positivity, we hope that one of the final highlights of a challenging 2020 calendar year will be the latest edition of […]
B.C. coaches say “…basketball is going back to being about you and a hoop” How to summon your inner-Naismith in a time of social distancing
NORTH DELTA — What defines a self-made athlete?As the 2019-20 B.C. high school basketball season was coming to an end last March, just days ahead of a province-wide COVID-19 shutdown, it was certainly not a topic I spent much time pondering.Yet some two months later, I can say with great confidence that it has emerged […]











