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Yu seeking UNBC coaching job |
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Written by JASON PETERS
Citizen staff
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Monday, 07 July 2008 |
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COLLEGES ATHLETIC ASSOCIATIONDUCHESS PARKUNBCUNBC NORTHERN TIMBERWOLVESUNITED STATES
This past season, the 25-year-old Yu was an assistant coach with the UBC Thunderbirds, who compete at the Canadian Interuniversity Sport level. He worked under head coach Kevin Hanson and alongside assistant Randy Nohr and is now interested in stepping up to a head-coaching job at UNBC. The position became available when former UNBC head coach Zane Robison accepted a different job at the university.
“UNBC is a great opportunity for me,” Yu said when contacted by The Citizen. “I was hoping Zane was going to hold onto his job a bit longer so I could get a little more experience under Kevin Hanson and Randy Nohr. But I really feel I’ve learned a lot this year, and in the last seven years of playing.”
Yu played as a Thunderbirds point guard for three seasons, from 2003-04 to 2005-06, and was team captain the final two seasons. He began his post-secondary career with the Capilano College Blues, who run the floor in the B.C. Colleges Athletic Association. Yu, a 2001 graduate of Duchess Park secondary school, was Capilano’s team captain in his second year with the Blues.
Yu is currently working on his Level 3 coaching certification and is head coach with Future Stars Athletic, an organization that runs basketball camps for youngsters. He has been instructing at hoops camps in the Vancouver area since 2002.
“I will be a valuable asset to any team as a coach and I do think I can produce a winning team at UNBC,” Yu said. “I’ve learned a lot about the business side of coaching as well, through Kevin, and if I did come to Prince George, I’d be able to bring in some corporate sponsorship, (do) some corporate fundraising. Prince George is where I want to be later on in life, it’s where I want to raise my family.”
Yu said he’s ready to be a head coach in the BCCAA, the Timberwolves’ current league.
“Being a point guard, my whole job in basketball games was to make different reads on the court, understand what was going on on the court,” he said. “Basically I was an extension of the coach, on the floor. The coaching aspect, that’s the least of my worries.”
Yu is also confident he can lead a team at the CIS level. The UNBC athletics department will submit an application to the Canada West conference of the CIS later this month. If the application is successful, the team will tip off in the CIS in the fall of 2010.
“I’ve coached under probably one of the best CIS coaches in history, and one of the best CIS players in history, Randy Nohr,” he said. “His transition to be a coach was effortless. Playing under those coaches for three or four years and now coaching with them for one-and-a-half years, I do feel I’ve learned a lot and I do feel I know how to run a successful basketball program at the CIS level. And I have a little brother (Nathan, a UBC guard) that’s going to be playing the next four years at the CIS level so I’m going to be kept up to date in everything that’s going on.”
Robison, who took a job in student recruiting and advising, is part of the hiring committee that has been assembled to find a new men’s basketball coach. The committee, which includes athletics director Len McNamara and women’s basketball coach Loralyn Murdoch, is in the process of short-listing candidates and may start conducting interviews this week. Applications have come from within Prince George and the province. Coaches from Alberta, Ontario, Quebec and the United States have also applied for the position.
Robison said the quality of the applicants is high. The list includes individuals who have worked as head coaches and assistant coaches in the CIS.
“There are really good applicants,” Robison said. “I’m very impressed with the pool of people that we have who want the job. I think whoever we choose, it’ll be a very good person who will definitely bring the program to the level we want.”
The person who gets the job will lead the Timberwolves through the 2008-09 BCCAA season and will also have to work during the Canadian Colleges Athletic Association national championship tournament. The T-wolves will be the host team for nationals, March 19-21 at the Charles Jago Northern Sport Centre.
UNBC’s CIS ambitions, and the fact the CCAA nationals will be here in March, are factors in the amount of interest the job opening has attracted. Robison also said positions like this one don’t become available very often.
“Those kinds of jobs are very rare,” he said. “There are usually only one or two across the country every year that come up.”
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Last Updated ( Monday, 07 July 2008 )
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