VANCOUVER – How do you maintain consistency through some major changes?
That's the challenge that the UBC Thunderbirds have tried to balance throughout training camp and their October exhibition slate, as they attempt to mold together a tantalizing mixture of returning, established players, talented senior transfers, and promising young recruits, all under the guidance of new head coach
Dave Taylor.
"When I first took the job, the idea was that we wouldn't change anything. That was the intent, and we're certainly not changing a lot, especially off the court," said Taylor, who is set to manage his first Canada West home game at War Memorial Gym on Friday, October 24th against UFV, before then travelling to Langley to take on Trinity Western the next night.
"The girls have been great in terms of their culture and some of the stuff they thought was successful and communicating that with me…they know what needs to be done, and we're all on the same page in terms of having high expectations and high hopes for the season. It's all about trying to tweak things – we have a really good foundation, so where can we add things to help us?"
Coming off an 18-2 regular season and a Canada West silver medal last season, the returning veterans on this UBC team know what winning looks like. But with plenty of roster shuffling – and the loss of All-Canadian forward
Mona Berlitz for the year due to injury – that winning formula will have to be a little different this time around.
The T-Birds do have an experience advantage, boasting six fifth-year seniors with incoming transfers
Jaeli Ibbetson and
Cassie Joli-Coeur joining
Olivia Weekes,
Sara Toneguzzi,
Sofia Bergman and
Katie Hartman. Those last four players have combined for 376 games in a UBC uniform (216 starts).
"We've got a really strong core returning, but we're still having to adapt to a lot of changes," remarked Taylor. "Of our top 10 or 11 players, we've got basically four of our players playing who are either new or coming back [from injury].
"As much as I'm happy, we're still a work in progress. Happy in the sense that we've had a really strong preseason, and I love where we're at, but there's a lot of improvement that we can have as a team too."
The Thunderbirds won four of their five exhibition games, two of them at home and three in Toronto at the Darcel Wright Memorial Classic. They won the rebounding battle in all but one of those five games, and held their opponent to 55 points or fewer in three of them.
The vets led the charge offensively in preseason, with Weekes averaging 15 points per game and Joli-Coeur and Ibbetson scoring 12 and 11 per game, respectively. Taylor refers to his collection of "post" players – which includes those three along with Bergman and rookie
Brooke Wagner – as forming the biggest strength of the team in its frontline.
With Toneguzzi and
Cerys Merton, the T-Birds have a veteran backcourt pair who can clamp down defensively on the perimeter, making UBC a tough team to run up the score on. Taylor also tabbed
Stella LaGrange as a player who has impressed through training camp and preseason.
"She's probably been my biggest eye-opener," he said of the fourth-year guard. "She's one of those players you kind of have to be around to see how valuable she is and how effective she is, because she doesn't necessarily show up in the scoresheet until you look at the plus-minus. And then you look and go 'man every time she's on the floor we're just better.' She's someone that I've had a lot of appreciation for."
The Thunderbirds have an interesting test to begin the season, as their first pair of games will be the only time this season that they play both home and away in the same weekend. First up is a home date against the UFV Cascades, who are coming off a 15-5 regular season but have lost four of their top eight players in terms of minutes played from last year, including star guard Maddy Gobeil.
Then, on Saturday night UBC heads to the Langley Events Centre to face the Spartans, who are the opposite of the Cascades in that they only lost one regular rotation player from last season and have brought in fourth-year transfer Myrlaine Shelvey from SFU, who was the second-leading scorer for the Red Leafs last season.
The Spartans finished 10-10 last season, and with their high level of continuity and their players gaining more experience, Taylor tabs them as a team to watch out for this year.
"UFV is really different than last year…we're kind of guessing a little bit," mused the T-Birds' bench boss. "This doesn't feel like a normal league game in the sense that we don't have a real good feel of them that we normally would. Trinity we have a little bit better sense of, and I think they're a very strong team…it's a very difficult matchup in terms of guarding a lot of their actions.
"I think the weekend is going to be challenging in that the first one is a little bit unknown, and the second night more known, but with the known, knowing that they're really good. At the end of the day, we've got to make sure we're playing really well. If we're playing well, then a lot of results will take care of themselves."
UBC's first game of the 2025-26 season tips off at 5:30 p.m. (PT) inside War Memorial Gym on Friday. You can get tickets for that (and all other UBC home events) by clicking
HERE.
