Summer 2018

Every summer since I have been at Bradley from roughly the first week of June to the final week of August when fall classes begin, they have been spent here in Peoria with my team mates. Even though Basketball is considered a 'Winter sport' it really is a year round commitment as every major holiday is pretty much spend on the road, or as a team as you aren't really able to go home. Thanksgiving, Christmas, Easter, you name it, we are usually together and usually in Peoria.

However this summer was a little different. It had been five years since Bradley had been on a foreign trip and we were eligible to go on one, as the NCAA allows college basketball teams to embark on a foreign tour once every four years and a extra ten practices in order to prepare. We chose to go to London, England and Amsterdam, Netherlands as a team. In order to allow myself to play in front of friends and family, but also my fellow senior Luuk Van Bree to do the same also. Due to this our summer in terms of preparation was a little different. Instead of simply lifting, playing in open gyms and workouts with coaches, we took a more strategic approach to things. We started with one team practice a week, working on plays and defensive principles. (Months early than we would normally). We implemented a 24 second shot clock with a 14 second reset to replicate the FIBA rules used in Europe. We was preparing just like it was a regular season game and we understood although this trip was going to be fun it also meant business and we wasn't going to go half way across the world to lose.

We left on the 29th of July and returned on the 4th August. The first part of the trip began in London and I was honoured to be a sort of host and show everyone around my city. I introduced everyone to a authentic full english breakfast, we went on a bike tour, speed boat tour across the thames, visited big ben and rode the London eye. Pretty much if you name something touristy, we did it! The culture change was something that really surprised everyone, as well as the shear amount of people there is in London. (And Jet lag hit everyone hard). In terms of our game over there we played a pro team named Surrey Scorchers and it went well, I got to play against some friends and old team mates again in front of my family and we got a win 73-66.

We departed London for Amsterdam early August 2nd taking a train that travels under the english channel right there. Now in Luuk's territory, we went on a scavenger hunt, visited the right light distract and tried our best attempt of not getting run over by one of the millions of people on bikes across the city. For our game we played against a select team of local pros that are from Amsterdam and we had a good game. We won 74-48 and ended the trip on a high note.

All in all in trip was a major successful, we got to get out of Peoria for a week, the team was able to bound, we were capable of getting two games under our belt early and the practice days really helped us make strides much earlier than most teams are able to. This has really helped us gain momentum and we plan to keep it going for a great season!

#TheArrival