The UW-Platteville men’s and women’s basketball teams are overseas. They will check in with Division III basketball fans from time to time. Jeff Skemp is our correspondent.
Our final days spent in Ireland are starting to wear on everyone involved. The trip has been great, but many of us on the team can’t wait to get home to have a nice greasy McDonald’s burger, or a Mountain Dew. These things are a necessity to college students.
As far as the tours have gone, yesterday (Monday), we visited a beautiful Abbey at Kylemore. On our way there we traveled through many peat bogs and around mountains. The countryside of Ireland is as green as we heard about before coming, and is very beautiful. After visiting the Abbey we went to a Celtic (pronounced Keltic) crystal factory and looked at the amazing pieces on display, and then had the opportunity to watch a cutter work on cutting a candy dish. His quickness and precision was a site to see.
The athletes tried to get out of the last day of touring to walk the city of Galway and finish up any last souvenir shopping that needed to be done, but this idea was vetoed, and all ended up going out to see a city called Athenry, the only Medieval-walled town in Ireland with the walls still intact. Following this brief tour we were then able to spend the rest of the day free before coming together for our pregame meal.
The men and women both won their last games respectively, the men winning by a final score of 86-55 over the GMIT All-Stars. The opponent was probably the best team that the men saw, and the game was very physical. The Pioneers had great individual efforts from Curt Hanson with 26 points, Jeff Skemp with 20 points and Mike Shaw with 19. The lone senior on the trip, Berent “Bear” Froiland scored his only points of the trip with an and-one situation which brought the crowd to a standing ovation. The women beat the Maree Ladies 66-36, led by Lisa Grantman’s 18 points. The Pioneer men and women ended the trip with a combined 6-0 record.
The night ended with parents ordering pizza for the group and spending one last time socializing and taking group pictures. We depart from the hotel at 3:15 a.m. and will arrive back at Chicago O’Hare at about 12:30 p.m. Again, the trip was great except for the sickness that went around, and there will be many stories to share by all who were involved.