Monthly Archives: August 2010

Behrend in Brazil: Mmm … pizza

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The Penn State-Behrend men’s basketball team is Brazil. Justin Kovac blogs:

Our team’s fourth day in Brazil began with a breakfast consisting of chocolate cake, caramel cream puffs, and coconut cake. Every little kid’s dream breakfast. We then ventured through the cleansing forest to a picturesque beach that is usually only found on postcards. Houses that belonged on MTV Cribs lined the winding private road as well as the white sandy beach.

We learned one of Brazil’s most famous actors owned the most unique house on the beach. It made Vincent Chase’s house from Entourage look like a humble abode. Not only were the houses enormous the waves swelled to ten feet above our tallest player Russ who stands 6-foot-9. All of us were crushed by the humongous waves and in many instances flipped head over heels. Salt water was coming out of our noses, ears, and mouths hours later. As we drove back through the private windy brick pathway, we stopped at a magnificent waterfall. We walked across an ancient brick wall no wider than two feet to get to the waterfall. As we all stood underneath the waterfall we realized this was a once in a lifetime experience. We arrived back in the hotel, packed up our clothes and said our goodbyes to the city of Guarajua.

The many memories from our stay will remain ingrained in our memories forever. A four-hour bus ride awaited us to the city of Sao Bento de Sapucai. A mountainous region that the locals described as muy bonito (very beautiful in Portuguese). Sao Bento lies a mile above sea level. So as our bus struggled to make it up the steep, narrow roadways, we were able to take in all the breathtaking views. We arrived after a long trip to the resort that we would be spending the next two nights.

After getting situated in our rooms we arrived back at the lobby for our dinner. Little did we know the treat that was awaiting us. We sampled six different pizzas. Some of them similar to pizza in the states such as mozzarella or tomato and basil however most of them were pizzas that could not be found at any local pizza joint. The most unique pizza had toppings of ham, onions, mozzarella, and corn. Although it doesn’t sound to appetizing on paper, this was the consensus favorite pizza on the team. After trying each pizza, we still were in for a surprise. They served us chocolate pizza. The pizza tasted like a s’more but even better. The meal was amazing and we look forward to the clinic we will host tomorrow as well as the celebration of the city that is currently going on in Sao Bento.

Thus far in Brazil we have met many appreciative, interesting people. I have had the pleasure of keeping in contact with one of the people we met while teaching the children English at the Wizard school. She emailed me asking if we could contact each other and I would correct her spelling and grammar in each email. As I told her, I should not be teaching her English, she should be teaching me Portuguese. Through email, we have been able to learn a lot about each other as well as learn more about each other’s culture. Brazil has been a very fulfilling experience, full of many, many memories. I would like to thank the people of Brazil for being so accepting and nice to us. I hope to keep in contact with them as well. Obrigado Brazil (Ombrigato = Thank you in Portuguese)

Augie in China: Arriving in Beijing

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Augustana senior Kyle Nelson and his teammates are in China. He will be blogging regularly on D3hoops.com about the team’s journey.

Augustana has arrived in Beijing, China!

After many days of travel, lots of sightseeing and three games, we have made to the last stop (in China that is, we stop in Tokyo, Japan also) of our China ’10 tour. We awoke in Xi’an at 5:45 am, ate a quick breakfast and drove to the airport to catch our 8:30 am flight. We were flying to Beijing early to prepare for our game against the Chinese Junior National team later that afternoon.

This team was the best group of Chinese players in the nation that were 18-21 years old. However, according to an inside source, an American weightlifting coach for the Chinese women’s basketball team, this team was playing as an 18-and-under team. Clearly age requirements are very loosely followed in China…just like their gymnastics team from the Olympics.

This team is also the group of players that will represent China at the World University Games in Shenzhen, China in 2011 and will be one of the gold medal favorites playing in its home country. We played the game against this team at the National Fitness and Training Center in Beijing. This center was a walled off area of Beijing, essentially like a gated neighborhood, that had facilities and training grounds for every sport that China competes in internationally. This is the location where they would have trained for the 2008 Olympics. As we drove in we got to see their female weightlifters, swimmers and drivers, and their gymnastics team all in training. It also appeared to have dormitories where the athletes would live on the grounds as well. It was a very impressive facility.
 
To say that their Junior National team was tall would be quite an understatement. On their frontline they had at least four 7-footers, including a 7’2 center. I am proud to say I won the tip from the guy although I don’t think my quick tip was legal. For the majority of the game we outplayed the taller Team China. Our energy and defensive intensity overwhelmed the Chinese players who were not as physical as us, which allowed us to outrebound them. Everyone that played did a tremendous job, but unfortunately the outcome did not go in our favor. We ended up losing by one as a last second shot off a nicely executed play drawn up by Coach Giovanine did not drop.
 
We came away from this game a positive note however. We competed and outplayed the best that China has to offer at our age. Of course we would have like to have been winners, but playing this caliber of completion in the environment that we did is something rare to experience in the summer.
 
We looks to bounce back today by facing one of the top five university teams in all of China, Tsinghai University. This team just back from a camp coached by American coaches and is looking for revenge after we beat them three years ago in a close game. This game is sure to be a tough contest, and we plan on leaving China on a winning note!
 
Kyle Nelson

Behrend in Brazil: The ball is tipped

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The Penn State-Behrend men’s basketball team is Brazil. Dan Simpson blogs:

Our excellent tour guide, Fernando, rented us surf boards and took us to the nicest beach I have ever seen. He explained to us that the low tide created a path to an island and consequently created another beach. It was neat having ocean in front of us and behind us. So we crossed the path to the island to climb up a hill, which we all expected to be easy. Come to find out, it had steep slippery rocks and wet dirty paths. I thought for sure one of us was going to wipe out, thankfully no one did. A couple courageous individuals (myself not included) kept venturing to the other side of the hill. The hill allowed us to see the city we were staying in and a breathtaking vantage point on the ocean.

To cap off the night we played at a gym in the city of Cubàtoa. Outside of the building there was a banner advertising for the game with Penn State Behrend E.U.A on it. It was neat to see, and we knew we were going to have a fun environment. The second biggest television station filmed our game and conducted interviews with coach and some players. All throughout the game there were kids and even adults lined up behind our bench asking for our names. We didn’t know if we should talk to them or not for fear that coach wouldn’t approve it during a game. Once the game ended, we spent the next thirty minutes being swarmed by kids. Justin has been a crowd favorite (maybe because he handed out silly bands). During that time I approached a player on the other team and he wanted to trade me a futbol jersey for one of my Behrend shirts. I was shocked he wanted to do so, but I made the trade.

We won the game, but the atmosphere made the experience something we will never forget. Fernando (our guide) thanked us and told us how thankful the city is to have us play and impact them in a positive way.

Augie in China: A physical game

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Augustana senior Kyle Nelson and his teammates are in China. He will be blogging regularly on D3hoops.com about the team’s journey.

Our final day in Xi’an consisted of a morning sightseeing trip and a game. In the morning we gathered to see the 600 year old Xi’an city wall. The wall was 36 ft high and nine miles around in a rectangle shape. It was an impressive structure that had four entrances to the inner city at the North, South, East and West sides. Our guide explained that the entrances had to be altered to handle today’s foot and car traffic into the city.

We spent about an hour on the wall before heading to the markets and back four a pregame meal at the hotel.

It was an hour drive to Xi’an University, which is also called Northwest Polytechnic University. The campus was very modern looking and had a large basketball arena. Our game was played in front of about 1000 fans that there were not as loud as the previous match. The officials allowed a physical game, which was fine for us. We jumped to a big lead at half and rode the momentum for a 78-54 final to move our record to 3-0 in China.

We have a very early flight to Beijing in the morning and then play the National Developmental CBA team at their training center. This will be the second game of a three day, three game stretch and it is sure to be the best opponent thus far.

Vikes look to go 4-0 tomorrow!

Kyle Nelson

Behrend catches a wave in Brazil

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The Penn State-Behrend men’s basketball team is Brazil. Chris Thorsen blogs:

The second day was a very exciting and eventful day. We started our day off with a great breakfast at our hotel here in Guaruja. The breakfast is very similar to our types of breakfasts in the U.S. except down here they also have some desserts for breakfast, so we helped ourselves to some chocolate cake and other pastries.

We then went to the beach and were treated to our first surf lessons ever. It was a great time. The instructors we had were really cool and they all wanted us to succeed at riding a wave. Some of us were surprisingly good at it right away and others it took awhile to get the hang of, but eventually all of us were able to stand up on the board.

Next, we continued with another great lunch at a restaurant down by the beach. After lunch we headed to the city of Santos. To get there we had to take a ferry. However, on this ferry people just drive their cars right onto it and you have the choice of either staying in the car or getting out and standing on the boat. So of course we got out and stood on the ferry and took some nice pictures.

The next part of our day was very exciting. We went to a school where Brazilian children try to learn English and we assisted them in their learning. We split into groups and all of them had some questions prepared for us. Their English was a lot better than we thought it was going to be. They understood a lot of what we said and they spoke it with no problem. It was very nice to interact with them and learn things about how their lives are here, and it seemed like they enjoyed learning about our lives back home also. They were enjoyable to talk to and it was a great experience for all of us.

Brazilian school children

Finally, we ended the night with our first game versus P.R. Grande (a semi-professional team or “club” team here in Brazil). It was a very exciting and intense game. We ended up winning 73-71. Everyone on our team contributed and played well. There were some younger fans there watching and enjoying what they were seeing. After the game, we gave each player on the other team a set of Penn State Behrend playing cards. They were thankful for our gift and a few of them spoke English and were very nice to talk to.

Getting back on the bus many kids surrounded us and were telling us congratulations and some even wanted us to take pictures with them. We embraced all of the attention and tried making all of the kids happy. So all in all, day number two here in Brazil was a very adventurous and exciting day.