I'll sleep when I'm dead.

I have slept nine hours in the last seventy-two, so please mind the poorly veiled urgency dripping from this post—but frankly, all I wanna do is shower and sleep for three days straight. Instead I am writing this. Guess I'll sleep when I'm dead. 

This week we played our final preseason games. Holy cow, I can’t believe that is true, but it is and now, one week from today, season will have officially started. Tuesday we faced another team from our league, Rotenburg. The game was at home, which is always nice, and we had an energetic little crowd that night. The game started really well for us and maybe that was the problem. After jumping out to a fifteen-point lead in the 1^st, it seemed like we took our feet off the gas for the rest of the game until the 4th and sorta lost our edge. It didn’t help that Bri, our PG, twisted her ankle in the second quarter. I was PG for the remainder of most the game. AS I am writing this I am suddenly seeing a distinct correlation. Anyways, we had sustained a ten-point lead going into the 4^th, despite not playing particularly well, but as the clock ticked away, so did our uncertain lead. With 4 minutes left, they took a one-point lead for about ten seconds, but wouldn’t regain it again. We won by six and I had thirty points.

Thursday was our next and final game and it was on the road at Marburg. Though a different team this year after losing their starting posts, Marburg is still good and they proved this. Again, we started the game fairly well, though we boasted only an eight-point lead. But instead of improving as the game progressed, we got worse. After three quarters we were down five and I had scored two points. Yikes. I had missed everything with the exception of two free throws. I was something like 0-6 from 3’s and 0-2 from inside, so it was hardly my day. Down nine with four minutes left in the 4^th quarter, things finally clicked. Finally. Before I knew it, there was less than a minute left and I had just tied the game with two free throws. Moments later we fouled their shooter and she gave them the lead with ten seconds left. We inbound the ball to Morty and we have the length of the court to go. She kicks it to me on the right wing at half court—eight seconds, seven seconds, six seconds—and all we need is a two to tie. I don’t like ties (incidentally, that’s why I quit soccer) so as I dribbled toward the three-point line, I faked the drive and pulled the three with two seconds on the clock. And boom goes the dynamite. We won by one and I finished with nineteen points. Perfect way to end preseason.

This weekend was our last free weekend before season starts, so I thought it was necessary to do something—go somewhere. Who do I know in Europe close enough to drive to that would love to have me visit them? No one. Okay fine, let’s rephrase: who would LET me visit them? The answer to this would be Kelly, my Dutch roommate from last season. I have always wanted to visit Amsterdam and I hadn’t seen Kelly since we said bye in Croatia so Holland it was.  Since both my roomies were nursing injuries, this would be a solo road trip and my first one at that over here. The trip took exactly five hours and turned out to be pretty simple. And as much as I don’t especially like driving for long periods of time, I gotta say it’s hard to not enjoy yourself driving through Europe. I left at 4am and got to Delft, where Kelly lives, at 9am. Maybe you are wondering why I left so early and the answer to this is two-fold: first, I couldn’t sleep and there is nothing worse than being desperate to sleep and knowing you won’t; second, I find I feel waaaay more comfortable driving unfamiliar territory when I can stop, turn around and/or reverse on the highway whenever I need to. That might sound ridiculous, but when you have to read signs in a language you hardly know, being able to reverse after passing your exit, or simply slow down to a crawl in order to properly comprehend the signs is ideal. And yes, I did this. We took a short train to Amsterdam and walked around the city all day; it seriously is unlike anything. The canals stream throughout the city and are truly breathtaking as are the buildings, which I realize in Europe, isn’t that uncommon. 

Amsterdam though has such a unique atmosphere, thanks in large part to the liberal and free-spirited culture fostered there from all the weed. It is everywhere and it is pungent. The coffee smoke shops are all over the place and they are all filled all of the time. But this city is more than just weed, sure. It’s got that whole weird, inappropriate and questionably legal purchasing of sex element too, if that’s your thing. Even worse than that—yes, I am actually suggesting there are worse things—within the “red light district” area you can also pay to watch live sex. I was warned about this show and, actually, encouraged to see one while I was there. Honestly, it was considered. I mean, you hear “live sex show” and you wonder what’s that all about, thinking maybe it’s a metaphor or an odd improv show. Then you get there and it’s not, it’s simply people having sex…live. The consideration was short lived and we decided our imaginations were enough for us. I know in the past I have adhered to a pretty impressive tradition of embracing cultural differences, even the ones of the naked variety, but paying to see that is outside my scope of comprehension or capacity. I could barely walk past the establishment without feeling like I needed a shower. How that became normal for the people there I will never know, but all this goes into what makes Amsterdam such a remarkable city. I watched Kelly play that night in her Dutch league game and then we went dancing with all her friends. We got home at 5am and I drove home to the Wolf at noon. I'll sleep when I'm dead.

Season opener is next weekend and Marburg is hosting this year. Since we won the league last season, we play the last game on Sunday. My team picked me to shoot in the three point competition, which if you recall didn’t go too well last season so I am happy for a second shot. Below are the links to both my team website and the website for the league, as promised. To watch my games, you click the league link and then on the right hand side there will be a list of each of the games for the week there. Below each game there is another link that says "livestreaming"--click this and you should be good to go. If not, tinker with some things and figure it out. Ha. 

http://www.wildcats-baskets.de/

http://www.dbbl.de/cms/

Oh, by the way, I have a number now that you can reach me at via text if you so desire. It's 1 (805) 253-2987. It is just a texting app but I'd love to hear from you if you ever get a chance! Or, if you are as cool as this lady, you can just skype me when you wake up at NOON on a Sunday :) Whatever works.

One step at a time.

I hate losing. I think I have always been this way. And I bet if you’d ask my mom, she’d quickly agree that I have never handled it particularly well either (over the years she has learned to dispense with the pep-talks and simply leave me alone for 24hrs). I have found the ONLY thing that can ease the sting of a loss is playing that team again… and beating them. I was so grateful to learn we would have this opportunity with Osnabruck who had embarrassed us when we visited them in August. This time they were busing to us, and this time we had a few more weeks of practice and games under our belts to prepare. We were up by 10 most of the game, but they cut it late and had chances to take the lead. We sealed it with some free throws and solid defense at the end. I had 15 points. They scored 80 on us last game—this time we held them to 56. Need to keep moving forward, one step at a time.

The tournament in Prague was next, and we headed out the following afternoon on our 5-hour journey to Czech. We played the next day at 2pm against a team that turned out to be pretty bad. Actually, that is being generous. This team was just terrible. I have always hated the excuse that you play down to the level of your competition. Why? Why not force them to play up and when they can’t you simply kick their butts? Unfortunately, we went with the excuse and played pretty bad most the game, too. Eventually we pulled away by double digits and won, but it was not a fun game to be apart of, nor did we take any steps forward. The team we were playing the next day was in the stands watching, no doubt enjoying our remarkable impersonation of high school basketball (barely an exaggeration there). We went into the city that night; this was my second time in Prague, but I was reminded of how incredibly stunning Prague is and how impossibly blessed I am.

Despite our awful first game and despite witnessing said game, our next opponent decided to run a box and one against us on Saturday—I can only assume this was because I scored 25 points in that stink fest. I guess it sorta worked since I scored just 10, but we won by 15 as the rest of our team played well...so ultimately, not so effective since we have other scorers. Again, our defense stepped up big, too, which is becoming our bread and butter more and more. One step at a time. The championship game was the next day against the host team, Prague. They are a good Div 1 Czech team so this would serve as a tough challenge for us as well as a benchmark moving forward. We came out on fire and for most the game stayed this way, which was helpful cause our defense wasn’t quite on point for parts of the game—what was I saying about bread and butter? We won by 9 and I had 31 this time around. Following the game, we quickly collected our things and bused the 50kms to Nymburk where our camp would be held. We had a short turnaround: our five days of fun started the next morning at 7:30.

I’ll just give a quick outline of what our days looked like during camp: conditioning in the morning followed by breakfast; then shooting practice followed by weights followed by swimming; then lunch followed by court practice followed by dinner; and lastly another court practice followed by pool, ice tub, or sauna. Tuesday and Thursday night were different because we had games back in Prague rather than practices, which we were grateful for. Tuesday’s game was an interesting one for a couple reasons. First off, we played in a gym you’d expect to find in a prison, somewhere. Having never been in a prison, it’s hard to explain why I was sure of this, aside from the gated windows, tiny space, creepy lighting and general “trapped” vibe, but go with it. It was also interesting because of how the foul situation unfolded—in the first half, Roli (starting SF) fouled out, I had four (big shocker) and a couple posts had three for us. I’d bet no one on their team had more than one. Talk about home court advantage, these refs certainly seemed to dislike us. Despite being rather exhausted from camp and the Prague tournament, we battled and actually didn’t look like the more tired team. Maybe that team should invest in some conditioning workouts. But this team was good, the best team we'd played so far. After going back and forth for much of the game, we took a one-point lead and ultimately won 69-68. We were really proud of ourselves for gutting that one out. I had 35 points but shot the ball excessively to do so—but only cause my coach Vlasti made me. Seriously. 

I wasn’t having a great shooting game to start, which was frustrating, naturally. I tried playing through it, getting to the basket instead, meanwhile passing up a few open looks, too, which ticked off Vlasti. He called me out in a timeout, more or less saying, “You are a shooter right? Well you can’t make baskets if you don’t shoot it, so when you are open, shoot.” Tough to fight that kind of logic. And while I don’t like the idea of shooting my way out of a slump in a game, I generally prefer his perspective since it gives me the green light to shoot, and there is nothing I like better…except winning, I reallllllllly like that. So shoot the ball I did. It was the darndest thing, but after he said that (when you’re open, shoot) I found myself open, like a lot…like allll the time…mostly. Basically. Yes, I was basically open most the time, sometimes. I probably coulda shot my way out of 3 slumps as much as I shot it after that, but I was just following directions. I think that’s what my tombstone will say: Here lies Sami, she followed directions well.

Thursday, again, we had a game rather than practices that night, and it was also in Prague. This team was pretty good, but I think we lost because we finally gave into fatigue. Well, fatigue, and our zone defense was dreadful. I can only speak for myself, but I know I was huffing and puffing and generally exhausted throughout the game; our 20-minute warm-up has never felt longer. Still, we had a 10-point lead much of the game, despite a painful number of turnovers, until we decided to try our zone.  Our appalling attempt at a 2-3 zone allowed lay-up after uncontested jumper after lay-up and killed us. Sure, we hadn’t ran it before, but it’s a 2-3 zone so I figured we’d be alright. Hardly. By the time our coach put us back in man, we’d lost our lead and in fact faced a small deficit even. Here is where my fatigue beat me as I missed a short jumper and a 3 to tie the game. I finished with 25, but felt pretty bad for coming up short. Despite the unfortunate outcome, we established where our zone is ineffective and needs work and we competed with our tank's on empty, so I think we took a step forward—maybe not a Shaq size step, but like an 8 year old girl’s step.

Camp was actually pretty cool. Of course it was exhausting, but the team has this tradition where every night during camp it is Vlasti’s birthday, and so every night became a celebration. All of us—players, coaches and trainers—gathered at the bar to drink beer and hang out together to honor Vlasti’s invented, perpetual birthday. Since I still hate beer, I drank water, but that wasn’t really the point. We’d play games and just spend time bonding a little bit. 

We made it home late last night/early this morning to Wolfenbuttel. I am really starting to like this place more and more. Despite essentially being a tiny village, we have been fortunate enough to find some cool activities to do to entertain ourselves on our weekends off or between practices during the week. We made some friends who play American football in Braunschweig (just outside the Wolf) so we went to a couple of their games, which was fun, even though they suck. We have a men’s Pro B basketball team in Wolfenbuttel too, so we caught one of their games as well. Aside from having a horrendous football team, Braunschweig also boasts a cool zoo and movie theater that plays movies in english every Monday night. I especially love this since I have vicariously lived a lot of great life moments through movies. Good times.

Season opener is in two weeks. We have two more preseason games this coming week against teams from our league and then a week of prep and practice for opener. We still aren’t where we need to be, but we are getting there, one step at a time, and I think with a couple more weeks of work we will be ready to go for season. Regardless, I am really excited for this team and this year. When the time comes, for those interested (Mom), I will post the team and league websites so you can watch our games. For now I will just post my address in case someone wants to send me pictures of their face for my room walls. They are currently blank and it's unsettling. 

Sami Whitcomb

Wullenweber Strasse 4

38404 Wolfenbuttel

Germany