VANCOUVER — You’re the head coach of a Canada West men’s or women’s basketball program, and as the most disjointed regular-season campaign in conference history does its best to wind towards an organized conclusion, one question seems to keeping topping all others in terms of relevancy.Between re-scheduled games and extended byes, what’s the best way […]
Tag: UBC Thunderbirds
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 […]
A Sunday Read: What defines the heart of Terry Fox’s UBC-bound point guard Cerys Merton? “She never turns down a battle!”
PORT COQUITLAM — Cerys Merton was born with a drive that needs no ignition.And these days, as we hit the stretch drive to the B.C. senior girls basketball championships, it’s a most fitting way to describe the energy and the presence that the Terry Fox Ravens’ senior point guard brings each time she sets foot […]
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 […]
Buchanan Cup 2021: The rivalry returns as a sell-out crowd of 1,600 packs Simon Fraser’s West Gym to watch the hosts top UBC Thunderbirds 90-82!
BURNABY MOUNTAIN — As Steve Hanson made his way across campus Saturday evening for the biggest men’s basketball game at SFU in recent memory, he just knew that nobody was in for an ordinary night.“When I got here at 5:45 (p.m.), I could already hear the 400 people who lined up,” Simon Fraser’s head coach […]
UBC’s Jack Cruz-Dumont: As the Buchanan Cup grudge match resumes Saturday at SFU, ‘Birds starting point guard follows his family’s footsteps!
VANCOUVER — Even though it is arguably still one of a handful of the best basketball rivalries in B.C. basketball lore, it also is one which has been played so infrequently as to almost be forgotten by today’s generation of players.Yet something as glorious as the Buchanan Cup, the formerly annual men’s hoop grudge match […]
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 […]
UBC and the Hardy Cup playoffs: Despite its role as big road underdogs vs. No. 4 Saskatchewan Huskies, opportunity knocks Saturday for these young, untethered Thunderbirds!
VANCOUVER — With the ink still just five days dry on a what has been for them a revelatory regular season, the UBC Thunderbirds are being talked about in Canada West football circles as a team of tomorrow.Yet for a 3-3 team which was a fourth-quarter away from opening its six-game conference slate at 0-3, […]
TSUMURA ON UBC FOOTBALL: A reporter’s reflections on ‘Birds playoff-clinching win over Alberta, plus who’s in line for this week’s Game Balls?
VANCOUVER — A reporter’s reflections on a great day at the old ball yard on Saturday, watching the UBC Thunderbirds finish their six-game Canada West season by getting into the Hardy Cup playoffs with a dramatic, do-or-die 30-27 victory over the Alberta Golden Bears at Thunderbird Stadium.And all of this, of course, not possible unless […]
Playoffs hang in the balance! After horrific start in Calgary dooms ‘Birds in 53-14 loss, UBC needs a home finale win vs. Alberta, and likely a little help!
It didn’t take too long to reason on Saturday that the same youthful UBC Thunderbirds football team which had so convincingly flipped the fortunes of its 2021 Canada West campaign over a rags-to-riches two-week span, was perhaps suffering from a kind of collective swoon, the kind most commonly associated with too rapid a rise in […]