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: UBC Thunderbirds
Giovanni Manu comes home: On eve of season opener, UBC’s Pride of the (Detroit) Lions salutes his mentors past, relishes the chance to grow with the best offensive line in the NFL!
VANCOUVER — Perfect team. Perfect time. Perfect fit.So perfect, in fact, that you wonder if there had been more than a little divine intervention from the football gods above.How else does Giovanni Manu wind up a fourth-round pick of the Detroit Lions this past April, thus becoming the first UBC Thunderbird ever selected in the […]
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: An offensive line’s journey through NFL joy, the loss of a mentor and the rebirth of youth! On eve of opener, a look inside the Thunderbird trenches reveals the meaning of the game!
VANCOUVER — Football is a game of constant renewal, reinvention and rebirth, and perhaps nowhere is that more palpable than along its offensive line where its tackles, its guards and its centre can be looked upon as a union not unlike a musical quintet.Within its ‘lean-on-me’ kind of environment, offensive lines not only learn to […]
The story of Gio and Theo: UBC’s book-end offensive tackles bring rare size and athleticism to the party! NFL teams and major pundits can’t help but be impressed ahead of 2024 draft!
By Howard TsumuraVANCOUVER — The story of Gio and Theo is the story of two ‘Made-in-B.C.’ high school football products who not only made the decision to play for their home university team, but along that journey turned themselves into the kinds of players with a chance to play in the National Football League.UBC offensive lineman […]
UBC’s Brian Wallack: As his final weekend at War Memorial Gym beckons, the ‘Birds seven-year man espouses his recipe for success as “…I just decided to keep it really simple”!
VANCOUVER — It’s tough to fully quantify because there really isn’t a standard set of metrics you can apply to the question of just who the most improved player in the last quarter century of UBC Thunderbirds men’s basketball really is.Yet when you throw all of the ingredients required into that figurative stew pot of […]
UBC’s Vanier Cup ties that bind: It’s been 36 years since Mark Nykolaichuk’s Western Bowl pick-six sent host ‘Birds to ’87 final! Saturday, he’s at Vanier Cup ’23 to support UBC’s latest national title bid!
VANCOUVER — It was a moment etched in time for Mark Nykolaichuk.And fittingly, when readers of The Province newspaper opened their Sunday tabloid to the front page of the sports section on the morning of Nov. 15, 1987, what they saw captured that precise moment to perfection.“UBC Back In Final” the headline screamed, along with […]
UBC at Vanier Cup 2023: Through Soriano, Kennedy and a kid named Chez, how three blank football canvases now paint Thunderbirds’ title-contending DNA!
VANCOUVER — How do you define the image of a Vanier Cup national title contender?How about through the actions of three UBC defenders, who over the early stages of the second half of Saturday’s Mitchell Bowl national championship semifinal game at Thunderbird Stadium, made the kinds of back-to-back-to-back plays which not only reversed the momentum […]
A SUNDAY READ: It’s a Hardy Cup instant classic quiz: What’s 95 yards long and 52 seconds long? For UBC Thunderbirds, it’s the measure of a most historic moment! Comeback win over Alberta keeps Vanier Cup dreams alive!
VANCOUVER — It is already being talked about as one of the greatest single minutes in the history of UBC Thunderbirds football.And if you were one of the 1,966 who gathered Saturday at Thunderbird Stadium for the 86th edition of the Hardy Cup championship game, then you can count yourself among the fortunate few able […]
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 […]