VANCOUVER — If you had been harbouring the unmistakable feeling over the first two weeks of the 2024 Canada West football season that the UBC Thunderbirds looked more like a team that had fumbled away its core identity, turns out you weren’t mistaken.Whether it was through patience, belief or perhaps good, old-fashioned desperation, the ‘Birds […]
Tag: Canada west football
Alberta 42 UBC 28: No. 7 Golden Bears huddle behind dominant O-line performance, win second-half war of attrition to top No. 3 UBC in Canada West opener at sold out Thunderbird Stadium!
VANCOUVER — Isn’t it amazing how the simplest play in football, when executed with precision and consistency, can shift a game’s entire equilibrium.Yes, we’re talking about running the football the way it was meant to be run.. behind a wall of powerful push, snap after snap after soul-crushing snap.And as on cue, as such syncopated […]
UBC Football ’24: QB Garrett Rooker made Thunderbird Stadium his own ‘Home, Sweet Home’… Texas pivot soaked up Vancouver’s summer sun, now preps ‘Birds for Hardy Cup rematch Friday vs. Alberta!
VANCOUVER — Garrett Rooker has spent so much time on UBC’s Point Grey campus the past few months that the suburban Houston, TX neighbourhood of his youth may have, for the time being, defaulted in its status to that of his ‘second’ home.“I spent most of my summer here,” admitted the Thunderbirds’ fourth-year quarterback and […]
UBC Football: First Canada West crown of the century comes in gritty defensive win at Alberta as Leonard, Townsend, Soriano help hold Golden Bears out of the end zone! Bisons next as Hardy Cup playoffs open at home!
Even if they had been trying, the football gods could not have placed the UBC Thunderbirds within the margins of a more character-defining script than the one which the Blue-&-Gold found themselves writing Saturday on the road and on the final day of the Canada West regular season.It was one of those regular-season ending, winner-take-all […]
A Sunday Read: Like Miami Dolphins’ Tua Tagovailoa before him, UBC quarterback Garrett Rooker puts gruesome hip injury behind him and lifts Thunderbirds to national title relevancy!
VANCOUVER — All similarities are of course unintentional, yet it seemed there were so many times this past Friday night at a sold-out Thunderbird Stadium that the cocked arm of UBC quarterback Garrett Rooker had an overflow crowd of 7,100 in the same state of rapt anticipation normally associated with a maestro’s baton at the […]
UBC football 2023: As Rooker’s return & Sudden Sam’s arrival spark impressive 25-10 road win over Rams, Thunderbirds’ young linebacking core takes giant step forward in Regina!
On a night when lofty preseason prognostication had put them in a place to answer the most elemental question of all, the UBC Thunderbirds provided a resounding response.So, was the latest edition of Point Grey’s gridiron Blue-and-Gold worthy of their co-No. 1 ranking to begin the Canada West football wars this season, right alongside the […]
A SUNDAY READ: UBC’s Keijaun Johnson reminds us all of the heart-stopping power of playoff football! Road underdog ‘Birds shock Regina for Hardy Cup title game berth!
Playoff football’s most defining moments have a way of coming out of the shadows and taking our breath away.Yet beyond the most obvious ways in which they dole equal parts joy and despair to their most loyal fans, they also seem to deliver, with barometric precision, a universal truth about their victors.That’s what I was […]
From offence to defence, UBC’s Ryan Baker now the ‘tackle maker’ … Thunderbirds’ linebacker records 13 tackles in opening win! No. 9 ‘Birds at No. 2 Sask Huskies on Friday!
VANCOUVER — Ryan Baker came to UBC four years ago with a football resume seemingly as vast as the geographic dimensions of the school’s sprawling Point Grey campus.Now, five seasons into a gridiron career punctuated by not only the pandemic, but by a switch from one side of the ball to the other, the prowess […]
UBC Football 2022: The ‘Canadianization’ of ‘Birds Texas-born quarterback Garrett Rooker takes flight! Reigning CW Rookie of the Year leads Blue-&-Gold into Saturday opener vs. visiting Alberta!
VANCOUVER — If you’re a fan of B.C. football, I am sure you’ll agree that the summer of 2022 has been blessed by a thick coating of something best described as quarterback karma… the likes of which we have never seen.Of course, you can start with the previously unthinkable: Canadians Nathan Rourke and Michael O’Connor […]
UBC Football 2021: Gutted by playoff loss to Huskies, Birds’ coach Nill won’t skip steps that turns young team’s cache of promise & talent into its fully-realized potential!
The 2021 Canada West football season revealed a level of promise within the ranks of the UBC Thunderbirds that is darn near impossible to ignore.Yet in the immediate aftermath of a season-ending 39-17 loss Saturday afternoon in the Canada West’s Hardy Cup semifinals to the host Saskatchewan Huskies, ‘Birds head coach Blake Nill wasn’t about […]