September 25th, 2014 | Uncategorized
Less than an hour after returning from our induction retreat in Strangford, I had to be showered and packed to journey down south to Cork. I was headed to the home of Irish basketball to coach my U17 Ulster Elks club team. It was our first tournament of the season, and we were leaving Northern Ireland to go play the best competition the island has to offer.
As we passed University College Cork, we knew our hostel was nearby, but as it was around 11 pm at this point, we had trouble locating the hostel entrance in the darkness. We finally found the hostel and were all ready to crash, as we had traveling all day and hopefully the next day would yield 5 games. The Andrew Drumm Tournament, at Brunell Basketball Club, was an 8 team tournament, and the top 2 teams in each group would play in the semi-finals. We had our eyes set on making it to the championship. We didn’t come all this way to not get our money’s worth!
The hostel didn’t allow me the greatest night’s sleep, but in the morning I was buzzin’ and ready to go. Deirdre, whom I am lucky to have on the sidelines to assist and teach me (from her years of experience and boundless knowledge), pointed out the host of the tournament purposely scheduled to play us in the first game of the day. They expected us to be an easy first game since we were from the North where basketball is typically less competitive, in addition to the fact that we had the longest journey.The girls laced up and we were ready to play!
(Read the next blog to see how fared!)
