Tag Archives: CCIW

Augie in China: Home again

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Augustana senior Kyle Nelson and his teammates took a summer trip to China. He blogged regularly on D3hoops.com about the team’s journey.

Augustana players and coaches in Japan

Whoa, what a trip! From Aug. 3-18, our Augie basketball team has traveled over 17,200 miles, visited eight cities, taken seven flights, rode one train, played five games, went through three of the world’s five largest airports (Chicago O’Hare, Beijing Capitol Airport and Tokyo Narita Airport), and toured many sites across East Asia. It was the kind of trip that I will remember for the rest of my life, and I’m certain that everyone else feels the same. From bartering in the markets of Hong Kong to climbing the Great Wall, we experienced so many things and saw plenty of differences between our home in America and East Asia that made us both miss home as well as view Asia in a completely new light.

From a basketball standpoint, this trip showed us how much Chinese people really embrace basketball. We know that basketball is still a growing sport in East Asia, but every person we came across was excited to see that we were a basketball team from the United States. Also, the fans at every game were incredibly great to us and cheered for our play just as much as they did for the home team. We were treated as special guests and the people made us feel very welcome because they saw how happy we were to be in their country.

At this point of the trip (roughly over South Dakota traveling at 696mph) we are all ready to get home. It has been a great trip and we have all learned a lot about ourselves both athletically and culturally, but we are anxiously awaiting seeing family and friends again before school starts on Monday.

I’d like to thanks everyone who read this blog for the duration of the trip, or even just once. I really enjoyed writing them and I hope you enjoyed reading them just as much. Thanks to everyone who made this trip possible and I hope to see everyone at the Carver Center during the season!

– Kyle Nelson

Augie in China: Pick and roll comes in handy

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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.

Currently at a comfortable cruising altitude of 32,000 feet, I think back about what we saw on our last day in China. Our final day was dominated by a seven hour trip to the Great Wall. We boarded the bus and took the two hour drive from our hotel to the far outreaches of Beijing where the Mutainyu section of the Great Wall is. This part was built over 600 years ago during the Ming Dynasty.  Driving up we were able to catch glimpses of it on the tops of the mountain range.

Once there we prepared ourselves for the long climb up more than one thousand stairs to finally reach the wall. We figured this hike would be some good training for the upcoming 2 mile. The hike took a while, but once it was done it was definitely worth it. The Great Wall was a sight to see. It seemed to go on forever. Just walking around on it gave you a great sense of pride just for being up there. We were on the Wall for at least an hour and a half, snapping photos and just looking out onto the mountain range.

After spending time up there we took the cable cars down and got ready to eat our final Chinese meal as a team. By now we were pretty used to the food served at these places; baked fish, eggplant, cabbage, pineapple chicken, spicy beef and egg drop soup. However, that doesn’t mean that were not thinking about having some good American food once we get back home.

Our last stop was at two of the largest markets we saw during the whole trip. They were the Pearl Market and the Silk Market; both located in downtown Beijing. These markets we essentially like the department stores we are used to, as they were indoors and were either four or five stories tall. But we were still able to barter with the salespeople at these places. The Pearl market was most obviously known for its extensive pearl vendors and the Silk Market, you guessed it, had practically a whole floor dedicated to silk materials. The popular items continued to be watches, scrolls, and souvenirs, but bootlegged DVDs made their first appearance in a market this trip and were a popular purchase.

We have quite a bit of time to kill on this flight to Tokyo, Japan (about three hours), and I’m sitting next to Bryant Voiles. Here are his thoughts thus far about the trip:

Thus far China has been an incredible experience individually and as a team. Not only have we been able to bond as a team at some of the most influential places in Chinese history and one of the seven wonders of the world, but also places such as the markets, hotels, dinners and night life. For example, in Beijing the silk market had some very determined people wanting to sell their items. On more than one occasion, they would corner someone in their store and block them from exiting until they bought an item. Being the skilled basketball players we are we managed to effectively use the pick and roll on the salesman so that we were able to leave the store.  The person not being blocked in the store would walk up unknowingly behind the salesman and set a back screen, then the person being cornered would run the salesman right into the screen being set free of the trap and both people would then jog away as the relentless salesman yelled at us to come back. I entered this trip with an open perspective on the culture that I was about to embrace anticipating major differences. Looking back I realize that I have earned a greater appreciation for my own culture and even the little things in life that are sometimes taken for granted such as a toilet seat and clean water that can be drunk from the tap.  
Bryant Voiles ( Senior Co Captain)

Kyle Nelson

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

Augie in China: Vikings 82, Snow Wolves 66

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Yesterday we said goodbye to the region of Hong Kong and hello to our first day in The People’s Republic of China. We boarded a train at 9:30 am and traveled through multiple cities in the Hong Kong region before crossing into China. As we crossed into China we were able to see the barbed wire fence and guards patrolling the border as we passed by. The train took us to the city of Dongguan, located in Southern China. After passing through customs we met our tour guide, hopped on another bus and headed to pregame meal. Dongguan seemed even hotter than Hong Kong when we stepped off the bus, but we were too excited to finally play a Chinese team that we didn’t seem to notice.

Chris Anderson vs. Dongguan Snow Wolves
Chris Anderson scored 12 points in Augustana’s win against the Dongguan Snow Wolves.
 
Our pregame meal was a buffet style service in a five-star hotel in downtown Dongguan. We ate from a selection of sushi, tuna, salmon, octopus, barbecued crab, duck, goose, vegetables and more. Not your typical pregame meal but we were happy to try everything they had to offer. Once the meal was done it was an hour trip by bus to get our first taste of Chinese professional basketball competition. The team we matched up against was the Dongguan Snow Wolves of the NBDL (National Basketball Developmental League), essentially a feeder system for the CBA (Chinese Basketball Association). The game was located in their gym which was attached to a very nice hotel in the downtown.
 
The game was very fast paced and it was good to play against an organized team for the first time since last season. Something that we had to get used to quickly was the ambiguity of the calls. Many times the official would blow his whistle for a call and we would not understand why, but it was a good learning lesson to play through the adversity of the situation and adjust to whatever was happening. There was no doubt that our level of energy throughout the game was very high and it was a balanced team effort for a pretty comfortable win in the end.
 
After the game it was back on the bus for a two hour ride into the Guangzhou, a city of 11 million people. This region is often referred to as the “factory of the world” because it is responsible for a large portion of production of goods that get shipped to all corners of the globe. This was very evident as we drove through because we could see a lot of farmers as well as many factories. Dr. Moline described this place as the “engine that drives China’s world development.” It was definitely eye opening to see a place that is so important to the productivity of the world, but is just an afterthought in most people’s minds.
 
In Guangzhou we settled into Landmark Hotel, in downtown Guangzhou. A massive thunderstorm prevented us from going out to see the city at night, so we were resigned to the hotel until the morning.
 
A 10:00 flight to Wuhan waits this morning. We will be there for three days of sightseeing as well as another game.
 
– Kyle Nelson

The game story follows:

DONGGUAN, China – In the first official game of the 2010 “China Tour”, the Augustana Vikings pulled off an impressive 82-66 victory over the Dongguan Snow Wolves. The Snow Wolves are an NDBL (National Developmental Basketball League) in the Chinese professional system. Three years ago Augustana defeated a 17-under team from the same “club.” This time around, however, the Snow Wolves were beefed up a bit and employed a roster stocked with college-age players.

As has been the Viking trademark since Grey Giovanine took over as head coach prior to the 1999-00 season, balanced scoring was the answer in today’s victory. Senior Kyle Nelson (Deerfield HS, Deerfield, Ill.), who is handling a blog for the Augustana website on this trip, led the team in scoring with 13 points. Junior Chris Anderson (Mt. Carroll HS, Mt. Carroll, Ill.) and senior Bryant Voiles (Byron HS, Byron, Ill.) each dropped in 12 points. Sophomore Kameron Norton (Downers Grove North HS, Downers Grove, Ill.) scored nine points on four of five from the field.

The Vikings pounded the Snow Wolves on the boards, holding a plus 11 margin despite the fact that Dongguan’s starting center was 6’ 10” and weighed 270. Augustana also managed to grab 10 offensive rebounds in the game. George Dexter (Bettendorf HS, Bettendorf, Iowa), Brandon Kunz (Lake Zurich HS, Lake Zurich, Ill.) and Nelson tied for the rebounding lead with five apiece. Junior point guard Brian DeSimone (Buffalo Grove HS, Arlington Heights, Ill.) had six assists and just one turnover and the Vikings had 18 assists as a team.

Unlike the collegiate game, this international contest was played in four quarters. Augustana led 25-21 at the end of the first 10 minute session and were up 42-31 at halftime. The Snow Wolves made 10 of 26 three point attempts to stay in the game.

Giovanine’s team left the Quad Cities on Tuesday morning, August 3 and this game was the first of five games over the next nine days. The Vikings, who traveled by train this morning from Hong Kong in order to play the game, which had a 4:00 p.m. start, played a scrimmage two days ago against Hong Kong Baptist University.

“This was a good starting point for us in terms of the competitive part of our journey,” said Giovanine who is taking his fourth Augustana team on an international sojourn. He led the Vikings to Belgium and France in 2001, Ireland in 2004 and China in 2007. “We will play five games over the next nine days and will be traveling and getting an education at the same time. Dr. Norm Moline, our guide and educational liaison from the Augustana geography department, has done a wonderful job of making sure that our entire party is getting a tremendous dose of Chinese culture. He was tremendous at that three years ago and has once again outdone himself. We are very fortunate to have him with us as we combine basketball with history and culture in a country as vast and unique as China.”

Augie in China: First day in Hong Kong

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After another 4-hour flight from Tokyo, Japan to Hong Kong International airport, a flight that no one wanted to get on after 12 hours in the air, we finally touched down in Hong Kong. We went through customs and boarded a bus to take us to the YWCA Guest House in the middle of Kowloon in Hong Kong. Along the way, Dr. Moline gave us a brief tour as we headed to the hotel for the night. A bed looked like the greatest thing after being up for around 36 hours.
 
It was an early morning for everyone, 7:30, so that we could head to Hong Kong Baptist University to have our first practice on foreign soil. We took a nice coach bus over to the university which was about fifteen minutes from where we were staying. Once on the court we had a spirited two-hour practice before a friendly scrimmage game with the Hong Kong Baptist team. HKBU played us pretty tough, but in the end we pulled away for a sizable lead. There was some confusion at what we thought was the end of the game, but really was just halftime. In China, the college and pro teams play quarters opposed to the halves we are used to in the States.

Augustana with Hong Kong Baptist University players.
 
After the scrimmage, Coach G led a brief defensive clinic with the HKBU players to show them how we do it on the defensive end. There was only one player on their team who spoke English, but we were all pretty astounded at how quickly their players picked up what he was saying even though it was in a foreign language. The language of basketball must be pretty universal.
 
We returned to the hotel by grabbing a city bus and it was a quick shower and out on the streets for our traveling group. Dr. Moline took us to a local favorite of his for our first authentic Chinese meal. It was served communally and we all sat at round tables and shared all of the dishes that were brought out. Learning to use chop sticks was not easy and pretty much everyone gave up after a while and used their forks.
 
After the meal, we were allowed to go experience what Hong Kong offered. We cashed traveler’s checks and headed to one of the local markets to go shopping. We were able to interact with street vendors by bartering for what they were selling. Popular things that people bought were soccer jerseys, watches and some electronics. Shopping took up most of the day and we all headed down in groups to the river front to watch a light show that was on the buildings across the river on Hong Kong Island. Unfortunately, it started to rain so the light show was canceled. We had to grab cabs and city buses to find our way back to the hotel.
 
One of the most noticeable things is the language barrier. Most people we interact with only know a few English phrases, so it takes a while and we are learning requires a lot of patience to get the information that we need. However, this is just part of the Hong Kong experience and it was a successful day one.
 
Another day in Hong Kong awaits today.
 
— Kyle Nelson