BY HOWARD TSUMURA(VarsityLetters.ca)VANCOUVER — First as a player, then later as an assistant coach, Phil Jalalpoor cut his teeth in the university hoops world under the mentorship of one of the most successful head coaches in the history of Canadian university basketball.Kevin Hanson, the hard-nosed former UBC point guard who went on to forge the […]
Tag: Howard Tsumura
Trinity Western women’s hoops: With Victoria and UBC providing a challenging opening-weekend slate, Spartans open Canada West play ready to make every lesson count!
By Howard TsumuraVarsityLetters.caLANGLEY — The Trinity Western Spartans did not qualify for last season’s U SPORTS women’s national championship tournament held across town at UBC.Yet none of that means the Spartans went into this past off-season unaware of what it’s like to play the country’s best with both team’s seasons on the line.“We played Saskatchewan […]
A Sunday Read: Meet Dave Taylor! With 2025-26 season set for Friday tip, UBC’s new women’s basketball coach finds connection through player empowerment & paying homage to Thunderbirds hoops history!
By Howard TsumuraVarsityLetters.caVANCOUVER — If you believe in the unseen forces of the basketball universe, then maybe you can better understand the kind of pressure the game’s mythical matchmakers were under this past summer when it came time to finding the next head coach of the UBC Thunderbirds women’s basketball team.Their task?Could they pair what […]
UBC Football: ‘Birds surrender 17 points in final 93 seconds of opening half en route to 24-10 loss to No. 5 Huskies in 2025’s final home game! Playoff lives now hang in the balance with road finale at Regina!
By Howard TsumuraVarsityLetters.caVANCOUVER — A team of the world’s best surgeons, each armed with golden scalpels, could have dissected the box score of Friday’s Canada West football game at Thunderbird Stadium until all that remained were ribbons and been no closer to explaining how the hometown Thunderbirds dropped a near must-win 24-10 decision to the […]
Despite epic rally from 25 points down at half & freshman QB Drew Viotto’s 473 yards passing, UBC falls 35-31 to Manitoba! Thunderbirds’ Canada West playoff hopes take another hit!
By Howard Tsumura(VarsityLetters.ca)For the UBC Thunderbirds, it’s been a season in which its ‘ups’ have been doing their brave best to battle a plethora of ‘downs.’And perhaps that’s why after answering one of its most listless opening-half performances in a decade with a second half that seemed to come out of nowhere, it became almost […]
UBC Football: When veteran centre Gavin Coakes sheds tears of joy, it’s all about the origin story of the Thunderbirds’ heart-and-soul offensive line! Next test comes Friday at Alberta!
By Howard TsumuraVarsityLetters.caVANCOUVER — There were so many positives revealing themselves on the field last Friday at Thunderbird Stadium as part of UBC’s season-saving 23-22 win over the Calgary Dinos.So many, in fact, that we restricted our initial look at the victory from the standpoint of the ‘Birds ability to produce four massive defensive plays […]
A Sunday Read: In the anatomy of UBC’s breathtaking 23-22 win over Calgary, here’s how four defensive plays from the same needle and thread helped stitch a win and save a season on the brink!
By Howard TsumuraVarsityLetters.caVANCOUVER — So much of the time, the easiest way to gauge the greatness of a football game is to lather in its own gaudy bath of offensive numbers.Yet it seems that the truest gems are often times those games which arise out of nowhere, those wholly organic ones somehow stitched together by […]
UBC Football: Ahead of Friday Homecoming here’s three things to ponder after ‘Birds loss to Regina: How do ‘Birds stop the run? How dangerous is the Derek Engel deep ball? You gotta love Tyson Lewis!
By Howard TsumuraVarsityLetters.caVANCOUVER — It a little crazy to think that when the UBC Thunderbirds come charging onto the field Friday to face the visiting Calgary Dinos (6 p.m., Canada West TV) that they will have reached the midway point of the Canada West football regular season … in just 23 days.In what has seemed […]
UBC football: Who are the 2025 Thunderbirds, really? After tough loss in Saskatoon, Friday test against No. 6 Regina Rams could go long ways towards revealing team’s true identity!
By Howard Tsumura (VarsityLetters.ca)VANCOUVER — There comes a point in every great piece of mystery writing where the protagonist is confronted by a sense of the unknown, creating a work of dramatic tension best described in literary terms as a real ‘page turner’.In a manner of speaking, that’s kind of been the story arc thus […]
Veteran mentorship helps ex-‘Birds O-lineman Giovanni Manu tackle the challenges of climbing the depth chart with Detroit! New NFL season opens Sunday as Manu and the Lions face Green Bay!
By Howard Tsumura(VarsityLetters.com)VANCOUVER — Giovanni Manu came to the Detroit Lions draped in a blank canvas. Now, two NFL training camps later, the 6-foot-7, 350-pound former UBC Thunderbirds standout from Pitt Meadows has put himself in the big picture.“Short story is, if they told me I had to play left tackle against the Green Bay Packers […]