VARSITY ATHLETICS

February 23, 2009

Basketball teams travel to Big Apple and Beantown...

By Sophomore Center Kurt Kramer (West Chester, PA)

This weekend, the men’s basketball team traveled to NYU in New York and Brandeis University in Boston. While we may not have had much success on the court, the coaches did make the trip as enjoyable as they could in spite of the two losses.

We flew into Newark, New Jersey on Thursday late in the afternoon and then took a bus into New York City. After we checked into the hotel, which was in a great location just off Broadway near Times Square, Coach Sean told us that he had gotten tickets for us to the Duke/St. Johns game at Madison Square Garden. The seats were great because they were in a luxury box. It was really awesome to see Duke play in person and watch some of our favorite college players.

After the game, we were given some free time to walk around Times Square and get some food before we went back to the hotel. Seven of us went to the ESPN Zone to eat dinner. There we watched some more college basketball and had a pretty good meal. After that we went on a search for ice cream on the way back to the hotel but couldn’t find any and just ended up getting some ice cream sandwiches from a corner deli. When we got back, Alex Hildebrandt, Ryan Bokan, Eric Duerr, and I watched Lost in one of our rooms before we went to sleep that night.

On Friday, we got up bright and early at 9 a.m. and ate breakfast. We then went to NYU’s gym to shoot around and get used to the court before we played that night. We went back to the hotel to shower and change before returning to Madison Square Garden for a tour. Again, Coach Sean arranged this for us and it was really awesome. We were allowed to walk around the court and started goofing around and hanging on the same rims that so many great players have hung on.

Then we were taken back into the Knicks locker room, which was really nice, and saw all their players’ lockers and uniforms. It was really funny when Steve Young put on the Kryptonite T-shirt that Nate Robinson wore during the NBA All-Star Dunk Contest (pictured above).

After the Garden, a couple of the sophomores went to a barbecue place near the Garden that Coach Todd recommended. We all got the same thing and ate our food within five minutes of getting it because it was so good. Then Ryan Bokan and I went to Herald’s Square to hunt out some deals on clothes. We ended up buying shirts from Macy’s for about half the normal price. After that we went back to the hotel and got ready for the game. We went to NYU to watch the girls’ game. Unfortunately they lost, but we had started thinking about our game. For our game there was a really good crowd and we were getting excited, but unfortunately our offense wasn’t in sync and we lost the game. I was really disappointed because my family had come up from Philadelphia to watch this game. After the game, Coach was pretty upset because we did not play well at all. Then I went out to dinner with my family and then went back to the hotel for the night.

The next day, we woke up early again for the bus ride up to Boston. The bus ride was all right and I slept for most of the trip. When we got to Boston, we went right to Brandeis and practiced. The coaches tried to let us have some fun and had us play one on one games against each other before we went over Brandeis’ plays. After that we went back to the hotel and waited for dinner. While we were waiting, Steve Young, Ryan Bokan, Alex Hildebrandt, Kevin Herring, and I went down to the pool and chilled in the hot tub.

For dinner, we went to the Hard Rock Café at Quincy Market in Boston. It was really good and the whole team appreciated it. After that, Coach let us walk to Quincy Market for an hour before heading back to the hotel for the night where we just sat around and watched the Texas/Oklahoma game on TV.

The next morning we enjoyed a really good breakfast at the hotel. Then we went over to Brandeis for the game. Unfortunately, the whole Brandeis team was on fire. We could not stop them on defense and we ended up getting blown out really badly. We stuck around for the girls’ team game, where they also lost pretty badly. Then we went to the airport to begin the trip home under a cloud of disappointment. The flight back wasn’t bad and we got out of the Cleveland airport fairly quickly and rode the RTA home.

The trip wasn’t that good because we lost both of our games this weekend but at least the coaches made it fun off the court. Hopefully next week we can get a win for the final game at Emory and end the season on a good note.

Posted by: Creg Jantz February 23, 2009 11:14 AM | Category:

Posted by: cnj4 (Creg Jantz) February 23, 2009 11:14 AM | Comments (0) | Trackback