Trip of a Lifetime

Now that I have been home for twenty-one hours I have had some time to reflect on what this trip has really meant to me. It was obviously a great vacation. I experienced a foreign country while playing a sport I love. But, upon further examination the trip really meant so much more.

To your average spectator Ursinus Men’s Basketball is just a group of athletes who play in the Centennial Conference that look more like a men’s choir while traveling to and from games in their matching navy blue sport coats. But in reality that barely scratches the surface. It is a tight knit family that will do everything from not recline their airplane seat because the teammate behind them is 6’10 to carrying a teammate on his back around Venice because he sprained his ankle in the game that evening. It’s having an extended network of Ursinus Basketball Alumni who will give up Sundays to coach summer league games or buy every person an elaborate four coarse meal in Florence just because he is a good guy.

The trip to Italy will not only be a lasting memory because it is the kind of experience every person would remember for the rest of their life but it has even more meaning, I feel, for the people who I shared it with because it happened in the context of being a part of the Ursinus Men’s Basketball Family.

Also, I would like to give a huge shout out to my roommate throughout the trip, Louie Meindl, who served as my editor for the blog due to my severe lack of spelling capabilities.

I hope you all enjoyed my updates from Italy. Thanks for reading and I hope to see you all in the stands this season.

Over and Out,

Scott Niewiadomski