PAST: Britannia Bruins
PRESENT: Mike Evans Gymnasium
FUTURE: CIS Thompson Rivers University Wolfpack
Crossing paths with Julian Duong in the hallways of Britannia secondary means coming across an athlete on her way to the gym.
Even if the five-foot-seven guard has been shooting hoops for the past hour, it won’t be long before she returns to the place, basketball in hand, to pick up right where she left off.
“Basketball made me find who I am as a person,” said the star Bruin. “Whenever I had a problem, basketball was the first thing I would go to and I would forget about all those problems. I love to play, I love to work hard and I like to be around people and meet new people.”
Duong, who is known to her friends as Jules, turns her relaxed nature into a dangerous, determined threat once the game clock starts. She plays the perimeter like a sniper and once cashed in her fluid, natural shooting talent to score 10 three-pointers in a single game. Her first-step makes defenders easy casualties as she drives the lane.
“I like the ball in my hands. I’m a different person,” said the 18-year-old who will move to Kamloops to compete for Thompson Rivers University next season. She will study health care.
“People see me around school — I’m really happy, I smile a lot. When they see me on the court, I’m really aggressive, driven. I want to score and I want to win,” she said.
Duong was selected for the B.C. basketball program while still in elementary school. She played at Strathcona community centre and then Triple Threat. As a senior with the Bruins, she was denied a city championship title in 2015 and 2016 but in both years brought home the top prize at the North American Chinese Basketball Championship, a basketball tournament that draws hundreds of teams in numerous age groups comprised of players of Chinese heritage. Defending their championship in Texas this year, Duong was named the most valuable player of the girls’ U18 tournament.
Duong’s parents immigrated to Canada from Vietnam, and she made the Chinese basketball tournament because her paternal grandfather was from China. She also had to demonstrate she speaks Mandarin, which she studied at school.
“When they first watched me play, they were very surprised,” she said of her family. “They didn’t know their daughter could do this.”
Now, no one doubts what she can do.
mstewart@vancourier.com
@mhstewart
