Once every four years college teams are allowed to travel overseas during a break and experience a new culture while competing in the sports they love.
In 2010 the Northwestern men’s basketball team went 4-0 during a nine-day tour of Italy, and this summer their female counterparts will head to the boot on the Mediterranean Sea for 10 days. The trip will feature three games against Italian professional squads, who will begin preparations for their season.
“This trip gives our players an opportunity to bond and learn each other on and off the court,” Coach Joe McKeown said. “It’s a once and a lifetime experience for many of these girls to travel to this part of the world.”
One of those players who has never traveled to Italy before is Karly Roser. The sophomore point guard has traveled the world as part of the Canadian U-17 team, but she said this type of trip will be vastly different than when she represented her country despite a lot of similarities.
“The competition will be different because teams won’t necessarily be our age,” the Ontario-native said. “However, every time you travel overseas the routine is pretty much the same.”
The trip will serve many purposes for a team that started off last season strong before fading in Big Ten play because of injuries and inexperience.
With four freshmen joining the program in the fall, the European trip will give the team a chance to bond in a unique way. The chemistry that will be built on this trip will hopefully allow the team to start the season off as quickly as it did last season.
The extra time is something Roser would have liked to have in learning to play college basketball. Senior forward Kendall Hackney said one of her big goals for the season was to not have gaps between the different classes and she said this trip will help the freshmen come into the fold quicker. However, the biggest advantage for the freshmen may be the ability to get used to the quicker pace of college basketball before the season starts for real.
“It gives (the freshmen) an opportunity to learn from the older players and spend time with the coaching staff and learn how college basketball is played,” McKeown said.
The timing of the trip works out perfectly, because the Wildcats will get a jump on all the other teams on when they start practice. The NCAA allows teams to practice 10 times in preparation for the trip and then play 10 games while on the trip. Because NU is on the quarter system, the team was able to have the trip start closer to the beginning of the season and leave little time between the trip and the start of practice.
Even more than the practices, the team’s three games will be a learning experience for the girls. The ability to work out the kinks in a game and see what is going right and what isn’t will expedite the learning curve teams have at the beginning of the season as it tries to get used to playing with one another.
“Just experiencing a game early on and experiencing competition will show us what are team has and what we need to work on,” Hackney said. “It’s going to be huge for our team as a while and we can get used to playing with one another faster.”
The professional competition will also help set this team up for success later on. The team struggled to a 4-13 record against Big Ten foes last season. McKeown said he was looking for really good competition on the trip and Roser said she expects it to be comparable to a normal Big Ten game in terms of physicality.
However, Hackney said the record on this trip will not matter and she is excited to see how this team takes shape as the 2012-13 season quickly approaches.
“It’s not all about wins at the end of the day, ” Hackney said. “If we come out of this loving what we do than that’s a huge accomplishment in college basketball. We’re looking forward to seeing how our team grows in the weeks ahead and then in Italy and beyond.”
