The Christmas season means it’s tournament time in the girls basketball world.
There are plenty right in the five boroughs — the Big Apple Recruiting Christmas Classic and the Bergtraum Holiday Classic right after Christmas and the Aviator Winter Clash at the start of the New Year. All should be great events that provide New York City teams a chance play some of the best teams outside its league and from across the country.
Even with that said, I still believe this is no substitute for taking a team away for a few days.
Christ the King arrived home early Wednesday morning, around 6 a.m. from the Nike Tournament of Champions in Phoenix, Ariz. The Royals return playing their best basketball to date and are a more battle-tested club after going toe-to-toe with some of the nation’s best teams during four games in five days. It could be a turning point for a club with a number of inexperienced players.
But that is not the only benefit.
“They have to enjoy it,” CK coach Bob Mackey said. “There is more to basketball than basketball.”
One afternoon the team took a trip to the South Mountain Park & Preserve, a group of small mountains and hiking trails in Phoenix. Bria Smith, the team’s star guard, wanted nothing more than to get the top.
“[Senior] Ariel Edwards is in front of me and she is like, ‘If someone breaks an ankle’” Mackey said.
It didn’t matter. They went – together.
“That was fun,” Smith said. “We took pictures on the top of the trail. It was funny.”
You cannot get experiences and memories like that by staying home. Granted, not every program and its parents have the money or the resources to finance a trip of that magnitude, but even a stay over in-state or site closer to home would suffice, if possible.
Notre Dame Academy is traveling to a tournament in Georgia, McKee/Staten Island Tech is headed to Lake Placid, and John F. Kennedy and West 50th Street Campus are going to Amsterdam, N.Y., to play this weekend. Bishop Ford already went to the Breezy Bishop tournament in Maryland and St. Michael Academy — well the Eagles flew all the way to Hawaii.
By leaving New York City you remove the distractions of home and give the team a chance for serious focus and bonding time. It is something that could be very important for a young team or a squad that has not been together for a long time. You get to hang out in hotel room for hours, eat meals together and just do things outside basketball with teammates. You gain a better understanding of who they are as people.
I know this first hand. When I played at St. Francis Prep we traveled to Hagerstown, Md., with a team that had five sophomores, and just four players with varsity experience for a two-game tournament. I remember we lost two games, with a chance to win both, but not a great deal of what happened on the court.
What I do remember is the mixture with the other teams and some girls from the area asking us to pronounce coffee and cat in our New York accents. I remember playing Mario Tennis with former Boston University and Quinnipiac star Bryan Geffen and current St. Francis Prep boys junior varsity assistant coach Chris Lanci, in our hotel room. Luigi and I had a mean service game that day. I remember defensive slides and foot fires in the pool, watching Fast and Furious together as a team and senior movie night with Domino’s pizza.
Sure you can play good basketball teams without leaving home, but you can’t create life-long memories if you do.