Fun and Games...Yes, Real Games

The UK Flames Bundesliga team competed in their first friendship game this past week. As far as the game goes, that is all I want to tell you about it...

No, but really. We played our first game in the Czech Republic this past Wednesday. We played a first divsion team from the city of Brno, which is only a two hour drive from the city of Vienna. We piled into a small VW golf and a 10 seater van and made the trek North. Since both the Czech and Austria belong to the European Union, there was no border control, which I found amazing conidering the fact we had just passed through a region that was once part of the Iron Curtain.

The gym was nice in Brno.We arrived over an hour prior to tipoff and were escorted to our dressing room. The gym was occupied until 20 minutes before game time so we warmed up for a measley 15 minutes or so and began our game. They jumped on us from the start and sped to a 10 point lead in a matter of minutes and we never really gave them the need to look back. I'm not positive what the final score was, but we were definitely on the losing end. (I'm not holding out...I really don't know the final, but it was about a 40 point spread. Lets just say 100-60?) There were some bright moments for our side, but those glimmers were simply not enough to keep us close, and our weakness were made obvious by their quicker style of play.

Ignoring the final score, it felt good to play a REAL game. Not counting my recent summer league venture, the last real game I played was in May of 2008. A year and a half later, here I am, playing basketball halfway around the world. It's amazing how things can turn out so well, despite how bad they can be at times.

Despite the flu-type sickness I am convinced I picked up on our little road trip, Osier and I made an effort this weekend to be social. Saturday, following our morning practice, we attended the Vienna sports day, which was held at the Volkstheater in front of the national library. We handed out flyers for our season opening, without speaking of course, and walked around the venue to chek out all the sports Austria has to offer. We left after 20 minutes. Later that evening, we took a short drive to Traiskirchen to see the BasketClubs Vienna Bundesliga, which is our brother team if you will, in action. I was surprised at the attendance, which had to be a couple hundred, but just overall excited to watch some basketball. Unfortunately, they lost. Oh well
To end our day (OK, maybe not) we returned home, changed, and headed to the opposite end of the city to the birthday party of the Vice President of our league. His daughter is also on our team so we made the trip out for a little celebration at a bar in the Northern part of Vienna. We were then driven "downtown" to our favorite German club, which plays 99% german music all night...which can be suprisingly fun. I knew exactly two songs the whole night.

We just returned from our second exhibition game, which we played earlier this evening in Sopron, which is the first city you hit coming from Vienna into Hungary. The drive took about 45 minutes. I am happy to say that we came away with our first victory. WE WON! The final score was 64-63 in our favor. We got some point production from a few different girls and took baby steps towards being a better team. I was pleased with the playing from my teammates and hope that we can build on this experience in the coming weeks and months.

Ok. So I have never really had the opportunity to complain about refereeing in any form of media (It's against CCAA and NCAA rules), so thanks to my deprivation in this area, here we go. Before I begin, I would like to add that the referees were clearly parents or even COACHES for the opposing team. I have never been so frustrated in my life with refs. True story. It's one thing to make bad calls, but at one point I felt like we were being straight cheated. It makes it all OK that we won the game...otherwise I would be calling this a friendship game rather than an exhibition. There was a highlight of the game, and it had nothing to do with basketball. During halftime, I was informed that I had 4 fouls. I knew I had 4 fouls. Nevertheless, I looked at the ref (who speaks Hungarian) and held up three fingers and said "I only have three". He looked at me like I was crazy, looked at the scorekeeper, looked back at me, held up three fingers back, and nodded. So essentially, I talked myself out of a foul. Later in the game when i was called for my 4th and the book said I had 5, I looked at the table and held up 4 fingers. The same ref ran over and nodded. I was still tempted to hold up one finger to the ref after the game, but decided against it, due to my 15 extra minutes of playing time.

When we arrived back to our apartment about 10:30, I unlocked the downstairs door to the elevator, pushed level 5 and opened the elevator door to let Osier out. Usually, I go out first, turn on the hall light, and open the front door. Osier reached for the light switch, which is surrounded by a red light, and pushed it twice. No lights came on, but we could hear a faint double ringing of a doorbell in our neighbors apartment. It wouldn't have been a big deal if these neighbors hadn't been over to our apartment 5 times to tell us 1) not to slam the door 2) not to do dishes 3) not to bang our hands against the wall 4) not to walk so loudly etc,...and we never even have people over. Anyways, we were aware that they were most likely in bed. Our door has a double lock, so I knew that I would never have had enough time to run and unlock it before angry neighbor #1 came out to yell at us. Our first thought was to bolt up the stairs to the next floor. From there, we took the elevator down to the basement, where we sat for 20 minutes just talking, and waiting to return to our floor and act as if we had just arrived home. Luckily when we went back up, neighbor man had already returned to bed so we made it in safely.

Moral of the story: Osier is not allowed to push anymore buttons after 9:00 PM.

That's it for now...season opening on Saturday will be worthy of a post so stay tuned, but Old Lady Spencer needs to go ice her hip right now, so good night from Österreich.

Fun Facts: The website (http://www.uk-flames.org/) has been updated. Pictures...yeeeeeee! Also, our season opening will be on Vienna sports TV, along with interviews and profiles. I've never been afraid of an interview until now...should be interesting. Let the games begin! Please.