By Howard Tsumura
Varsity Letters
NORTH VANCOUVER — Wonder what one of the best high school basketball teams in the province had planned for in the early morning hours of today, the first Tuesday in February?
“Umm, we have wind sprints at 7:10 a.m., tomorrow morning… and it’s on purpose, right?” Anthony Beyrouti, head coach of the Quad-A senior girls No. 1-ranked Argyle Pipers of North Vancouver, remarked over the phone to a reporter late Monday afternoon.
“We have to do hard things, and (the players) have to see the adversity and they have to overcome,” Beyrouti continued. “They have to overcome. And so that’s the challenge. You have to find hard things and you have to overcome them.”
They are powerful words on their own, yet the true measure of their potency is not gained without a better understanding of the context in which they are being delivered.
So what was that reporter’s question, the one which warranted the aforementioned response?
Quite simply ‘What been your team’s biggest learning moment over the past two seasons?’
“You know, unfortunately we had a bunch of things happen to us in our (B.C. championship) semifinal last year that we hadn’t had to deal with all year,” the head coach begins. “And so that (67-58) loss to Brookswood really… umm, I think it focused them over the summer and the preseason to come back better and more alert to the tasks at hand. To come back ready to go.”
The No. 4-seeded Bobcats, who led by a point at the half, may well have played the most efficient half-quarter of basketball the entire 2024-25 season, slapping what Varsity Letters’ reporter Dan Kinvig labelled as “a mind-bending 17-0 run” on the No. 1-seeded Pipers over the first five minutes of the third quarter as its superstar guard Jordyn Nohr rained down shots from seemingly every part of the court.
“And I think you guys were 2-for-24 from three in that game?” the reporter reminds in a sympathetic tone. “It’s a hard number to forget.”
Replies Beyrouti: “So, I’m not the only one that remembers that? …Umm, we have wind sprints at 7:10 a.m., tomorrow morning… and it’s on purpose, right?”
Context.
All of this is brought to your attention today, we hope, in timely fashion.
The calendar has hit February.
It’s three weeks and a day from the opening tip of the B.C. senior girls basketball championships at the Langley Events Centre.
And it’s just now, after 10 weeks of immersive dress rehearsals, that the real road to the LEC begins.
It’s that time of the season when, with all things being equal from both skill- and schematic-based perspectives, mental tenacity becomes the true difference maker.
No two teams have the exact same process, yet all strive to arrive in the Langley Township feeling the same kind of way about their potential and possibility.
From that lens, what makes these Pipers unique?
For starters, its core of a half-dozen seniors, led most prominently perhaps by guard Sadie Danks and forward Isabella Miljkovic, has spent substantial time — both last season and this one — either seeded or ranked No. 1.
It’s the reason that Argyle, perhaps like no team other than two-time defending B.C. Quad-A champion Seaquam and tradition-laden Riverside, gets their opposition’s best effort every time out of the gate.
After No. 1 Argyle defeated rival and No. 2-ranked Riverside 77-61 in mid-December’s Tsumura Basketball Invitational Super 16 championship final at the LEC, Beyrouti spoke to the fact that what has eluded Argyle in the past was not a lack of talent, but “… learning to win as a group”, and once that once that is accomplished on a consistent basis that “…it changes everything.”
Embedded core beliefs ultimately become mantras, and so on Monday the head coach could be excused for repeating himself.
“That’s the thing that eludes the girls’ basketball program, and it’s what eludes a lot of the teams in our house… taking individual success and making it something that relates to the whole team,” he said. “And so that’s been the focus the entire year. Understanding the sacrifice it takes. We got a lot of good players and none of that matters if you don’t sacrifice for the betterment of the group.”
It’s all about aligned action, and it’s also all about realizing what can happen when any aspect of the process is compromised.
“We got humiliated this year at MEI… they they beat us by a lot and it was embarrassing, and it was because we weren’t ready to compete,” Beyrouti said about the way his team was handled en route to suffering just its third loss of the season, a 72-54 mid-January drubbing at the hands of Abbotsford’s immensely talented, Quad-A No. 4-ranked host Eagles. Argyle has also lost this season to both Riverside and Double-A powerhouse Holy Cross of Surrey.
It was not the loss itself, between a pair of teams which must both be considered amongst the province’s top four or five teams across all tiers, that most irked Beyrouti.
No. It was the way the Pipers lost.
“If you’re not prepared, and you’re not ready to compete, people will take what you’ve worked for away from you,” the coach stressed. “And so a challenge for our group is a consistent everyday focus on being prepared and ready to sacrifice. And so I think the MEI game was a good learning experience. You know, you drive out to MEI from North Van, it’s like an hour-45. You drive there, you got a game, you play the game. It’s just complete destruction. And you know, MEI’s got a phenomenal team. And so then you’ve got to drive home and you think about it. And then you’ve got to think about it when you get home, and then you’ve got to think about it in the morning when you’ve got practice. And so it sticks to you, right? I think that that game is something we can look back on.”
With Miljkovic and Danks, and with the likes of fellow seniors like 6-foot-3 post-forward Eva Woodward, 6-foot-2 forward Sophie Nicholson, and guards Cassidy Nugent and Taylor Johncox theirs is a team which has put in the work for a chance to make amends for last season’s heartbreak.
Its 11s, perhaps most notably guards Kelsey Hungle and Hazel Pontin, showed mettle in their minutes at TBI in December.
And Beyrouti has held out hope that the team’s leading scorer from a season ago, 6-foot Grade 11 forward Mariia Maydan (17.5 ppg, 2024-25), out the entire season with a foot injury, is able to rejoin the lineup at some stage.
“It’s the same type of injury that (Seaquam’s) Camryn Tait has had,” Beyrouti said referencing the Seahawks’ dynamic reigning B.C. Quad-A MVP, who has been largely unable to join her team this season.
“Hopefully Mariia can get healthy for us down the stretch. When she gets back, she’ll add to the resilience of the group.”
Argyle is scheduled to play in the North Shore championship final on its home floor Thursday at (7:30 p.m.). It then hosts Langley Christian on Friday (7:30 p.m.) in an exhibition game which doubles as its Seniors Night.
Nothing about the process of making a deep February post-season run, however, is designed around comfort.
Instead, it’s about discovering the antidote to 2-for-24 from three in the Final Four, and to the anguish of long bus rides home from Abbotsford after sitting on the decidedly-wrong end of a score to MEI.
And it’s about embracing the real message behind the coach who at the end of practice might say “…Umm, we have wind sprints at 7:10 a.m., tomorrow morning… and it’s on purpose, right?”
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