Game Time

A long seven week preseason is finally coming to an end on Sunday with our first game against Opladen on our home court.  We've played four preseason exhibition games against first league competition, finding ourselves outmatched at nearly every position each time, but still fighting and never letting the odds best our minds.

A huge difference between European basketball and basketball in the states is the age range you can have on your team.  Some of our players are older than the coaches, some players are coaches, some are looking into colleges in the states next year, some do this after work, and some do this for work.  This is primarily due to the club format, where many of the Germans grow up in their town/city's club and play there from their youth well into their adult years.  Sometimes clubs lose players who go to the states to play in college and or who pack their bags and move towns to play for different clubs.  But, there are some who cherish their club and have pride in it as many of my teammates do.  In fact, we have a mom and daughter on our team (#14 and #8) who get to experience something very rare in the world of sports, playing with each other.  Good thing they don't play at the same position because  they are both extremely competitive, which could make things awkward at the dinner table.

Our team has several young, talented players, who sometimes I want to yell at for making rookie mistakes until I remember, oh yeah.. they are as old as my sister and haven't been playing as long as I have.  Then, we have four 20 year olds followed by our more seasoned players, who are 27, 28, 31, and 42 years old... and me, smack dab in the middle of the youth and the veterans at 24.  This combination makes for an interesting dynamic at times, but to me it just seems like we are one big estranged family reunited by basketball.

Introducing: the Dynamic Mom/Daughter -Duo!  Anna is only 17 and comes up to my shoulder, but she's an exact replica of her mom's toughness.  She went up against ex-Division 1 point guards the past few games without complaint and worked her butt off to take care of the ball and play defense.  Her mom, is the best rebounder on the team (yes I'll swallow my pride on this one, she even beats me out), and battles every game in all the toughness areas.  For 42 years old she is very fit and also gave ex-Division 1 small forwards a run for their money in the paint.

You may have noticed that the floor we are playing on in the pictures isn't an odd blue rubber like the one last year at Viernheim.  One thing I haven't been a fan of here in Germany are the rubber-floors as they are less forgiving than hardwood. By the end of last year I could definitely feel the impact they had on my feet, ankles, shins and knees.  Luckily, the club here in Osnabrück has two gyms with wooden floors, which isn't too common for the second league.  Only one team in the second league south had a wood floor last year, and that was Bad Aibling, who ended up winning the championship and moving up to the first league where wood floors are required anyway.  On the opposite end, last season Osnabrück struggled and found themselves battling to stay in the first league at the end of the season with Nördlingen (coincidentally Sid's current club and also the club of one of my former opponents in college from Simon Fraiser).  Therefore, we have a wood floor left over from their many years playing in the first league and we obviously hope to move back up at the end of this year.

Coming Sunday it will be back to the hardwood here in Osnabrück as we take on second division opponent Opladen in our season opening game!  I'm excited to see what our 7 weeks of hard work and preparation will amount to when we take on "someone our own size".  To see more about the team check out our website:

http://www.girolive-panthers.de/

...and as always, thank you for your support :) and all the best from Germany!