By Howard TsumuraVarsity LettersVANCOUVER — One year ago, it wasn’t hard to figure out the identity of a UBC Thunderbirds’ women’s basketball team whose best players were largely a part of the program’s huge six-player fifth-year senior class.The pregame player warmups were like exercises in palpable chemistry personified, what with its outpouring of camaraderie for […]
Tag: trinity western spartans
UBC-Trinity Western men’s hoops: Fifth-year vet Tobi Akinkunmi earns kudos for new three-point prowess! Thunderbirds unleash long-bomb barrage early to top host Spartans in early-season crosstown clash at LEC!
By Howard TsumuraVarsityLetters.caLANGLEY — The UBC Thunderbirds may only be one weekend into the new Canada West men’s season, but they’re shooting the basketball from distance like they’re in mid-season form.On Saturday night at the Langley Events Centre, the Birds came bursting out of the gates behind the three-point shooting of fifth-year forward Tobi Akinkunmi, […]
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: Tsumura on the joys of summertime basketball, NCAA Div. 1 foreign tours, and the road-less-travelled path of Trinity Western’s electric David Mutabazi!
LANGLEY — The best part of ageing into an ‘old’ basketball writer?For me, it’s that rare but reassured feeling I get, when against any reasonable expectation, a player straps the fortunes of his team on his back, and in this case almost carries them to an improbable upset.That is the place I found myself this […]
A message from Howard: After 40 years, I’ll bring a new writing direction to Varsity Letters for the 2022-23 high school and university sports season!
NORTH DELTA – Heartfelt greetings to all of you, my loyal, longtime readers.It’s been five months since I decided to take a break from my writing life.As was the goal from the very start, my decision to take sabbatical after 40 years of daily practice — first from my typewriter, and of course later, in […]
Mason Bourcier: With three triple-doubles over his past six games, Trinity Western’s well-travelled guard puts down his hoops roots at Langley Events Centre!
LANGLEY — Ask Mason Bourcier about the good times he is starting to have again on the basketball court, and he seems to first take a backwards glance into his own figurative rearview mirror before speaking.“I used to be that kid, who if you showed him a brick wall, he’d run right through it,” Trinity […]
The ‘Strikes Thrice’ magic of the Langley Christian Lightning! In a tier-free girls high school basketball world, might Double-A powers be BC’s No. 1 overall team?
LANGLEY — Imagine a B.C. girls high school basketball world without any tiers of classification.Instead, replace it with a soup pot of sorts in which every team in the province is thrown together to form a chowder-like broth.Bring to a boil.Cover.Simmer.Let the cream rise to the top.And when you lift that cover, who might you […]
B.C. women’s hoops game of the year! It’s 8-0 Trinity Western against 7-1 Fraser Valley in what’s shaping up as a classic clash Thursday night at the LEC!
LANGLEY — They are historic geographic rivals dating back to their days on the provincial college circuit when the British Columbia Collegiate Athletic Association was perhaps the longest league moniker in all of North American post-secondary sports.And they’ve spent a good long time building up their respective programs since moving up to U SPORTS.Yet on […]
Trinity Western men’s volleyball 2021-22: After cancelled season, battle-tested Spartans know that only their best will do against LEC-visiting rival UBC Thunderbirds!
LANGLEY — First, just days into the COVID lockdown back in March of 2020, they were denied the chance to defend their U SPORTS men’s national volleyball championship status.Then, of course, they were a part of a mass cancellation which wiped out their entire 2021 season.With all of that in mind, it pretty to easy […]
Spartans’ run to a sixth U SPORTS women’s soccer title scuttled as Trinity Western falls to MacEwan Griffins in national title game’s penalty-kick portion!
In its 17 prior contests this season, comprising Canada West league matches and playoffs, as well as U SPORTS national championship ones, the Trinity Western Spartans women’s soccer team’s 16-0-1 record showed both an aptitude and an ability to succeed at whatever kind of adversity had been placed in front of them, from injuries to […]