By Clay Gray
Photos by Mark Burnham
Sometimes, when you look at a person, it’s easy to tell what they do. If they wear a hard hat, they’re probably in construction. If it’s white face paint and gloves, probably a mime. If someone is at Starbucks on a Mac, they are definitely writing a screenplay.
In the case of Rebecca Langmead, it only takes one sighting of her in the standard gray SFU athletics hoodie, and you’re fairly certain she plays basketball. Langmead, who goes by “Becca,” is in the third year of her history major, and is just as likely to stay at home and watch a history documentary as she is to go out with her friends. “I could sit down and read a history book all day,” says Becca.
When this 6’5” Newfoundlander is not on the court or in the classroom, you can find her at the equipment desk, where she helps with the setups for varsity games and washes laundry for other athletes. After spending a little time with her, Becca’s down-to-earth personality came out clear as day. She shared one story about her first summer away from home. She had moved to Vancouver the summer before her first year, and she roomed with her grandfather’s now-92-year-old cousins, Dorris and Terry. Becca said, “It was really good that I got to spend three months with them, because when you move here you don’t have any friends [even as an athlete], because you just moved away from home. I spent all my time with these two 90-year-olds; that [experience] totally changed me.”
Like most students, Becca faces a lot of challenges when it comes to balancing the demands on her time. As some of you may already know, the solution chosen by the women’s basketball team is to get an early start on the day. Becca’s typical day starts at five in the morning, practice from 6–8, which is followed by an hour-long strength and conditioning session. She then heads to a 10:30 lecture, followed by a trip to a coffee shop for an hour-long break, then it is back to the lecture halls until 3:30. After all that, Becca descends back into the bowels of the Lorne Davies Complex to work for a few hours, or home to study. But Becca’s not one to complain about her demanding schedule, and with the season starting in just 12 days, she says, “I feel like I worked so hard all summer, and for however long its been [since basketball season ended] all these last seven to eight months . . . I’m ready to compete . . . I just want to go out there and be able to play and be able to show people that I’m better than I was.”
Becca marches to her own beat; whether that comes from growing up in Newfoundland or from living at an altitude with less oxygen, she clearly enjoys the little things in life. “We have a costume box in one our team lock ups, from past years of Halloween . . . so, we keep it all, and then we use [the costumes] at every camp that we do during the summer; Friday is crazy day. And I honestly don’t think we even do it for the kids anymore.”
