Pete Strobl's Blog
Pete Strobl grew up in Los Angeles, California and went on to play college basketball at D1 Niagara University, New York. After graduating with his Master's Pete began playing professional basketball in Europe and has played in France, Austria, and Germany. This season Pete is Player/Assistant Coach for Merry Monk Ballina. He writes a weekly blog for Streetballireland.com on basketball, life and his experience in Ireland.
Blog #6 - 24 Hours in Killarney
We arrived in Killarney around 5pm on Saturday evening. We left Ballina at 11:30am so we were happy to finally be at our hotel. It rained for about 99.9% of the trip and I saw about a hundred different kinds of rain: hard rain, drizzle, sideways rain, scattered rain, pounding rain, and misty rain. You name it, we saw it! We had tons of CDs with us as well as an iPod Touch that we hooked up through the stereo, but the only song that seemed to appropriately fit the journey was Rihanna's "Umbrella"!
By the time we actually found parking, checked-in, and unloaded our bags it felt like it was already time to go to practice/shoot-a-round. So back on the road we went to the gym and prepared ourselves for our first round cup game against Mustang Sally's St. Paul's Killarney. If you're thinking to yourself "man that's a long name", you're absolutely right! Anyways, we went through our plays to try to get everybody on the same page, discussed how we would handle different defenses that they might throw at us, and made sure we did a fair amount of moving and stretching in an attempt to get the long trip out of our legs. After practice we were all on our own as far as dinner and evening entertainment so some guys decided to go see a movie, some played x-box, some stayed in their rooms. Our hotel was just about in the center of the town so we had plenty of options. Jermaine (Turner), Puff (Summers), and I went for a walk through the town and asked around to see if we could find a nice Chinese restaurant. We stopped about 10 people to ask directions, and of the people who even spoke English, NONE were from anywhere near Co Kerry! People told me that it was a large tourist area, so I guess I shouldn't have been too surprised. It is in fact an extremely beautiful area and I would highly recommend paying the town a visit. We did eventually find a place and had some of the best Kung Pao chicken that I've had in a long time!
As a whole, our team is fortunate to have good chemistry. There's always a few new wrinkles thrown into the fray however when a new American joins the group part-way into the season as Jermaine has. The addition of long-time Ballina staple Deora Marsh for the cup game also added something else to the mix. Obviously we're lucky to have them both, but guys tend to feel more comfortable with each other after they joke around for a while. I think we all realized that we needed to "bond" and used every opportunity to get to know a little something about the new guys. Some of our players are off in college/university for the majority of the week so the trip was also a good chance to get to know them a little better as well. It was interesting even getting to know the guys that ARE there all week. My roommate happened to be fellow "vet" Shane O'Meara. After stretching and laying down to dream about the next day's victory Shane and I chatted for about an hour. I learned a lot about Shane: where he's played, his past, his job, his summer schedule, his family, his goals, his friends, his friend's friends, his desire to raise the standard of coaching that kids currently receive in youth basketball ............I think by know you can see that we talked much longer than an hour!
The game report is on-line on the league's site so I won't delve too much into specifics of how we won. However, I would like to ask a question of all of you that are reading this right now: Have you ever seen a gym or arena in which you had to insert money to use the showers following a game? This is my first season in Ireland and so far I've already been surprised by a lot. It's almost to the point that it takes something major to really phase me anymore. Paying for a shower after the game is certainly one of them! I remember seeing the small white box marked "Insert 2 Euro" in our locker room after the game and thinking that whoever wrote that was quite clever. My thoughts of praise quickly turned to anger when we all realized that we did in fact actually have to pay for our showers. I've played games all over Europe and have never heard of such a thing. I'm sincerely hoping this was a "one time thing" and isn't an accurate representation of what I should expect from our future road games. I guess sometimes you have to simply step back from the situation and laugh, (although I'm secretly hoping our gym staff in Ballina are reading this and planning some type of revenge).
All in all it was a great trip. Killarney is truly a beautiful town and I wouldn't mind having a few days down there to really get to know the area and see the sights. I'd also like to thank all the faithful fans of ours who made the long journey to support us. We ALL truly appreciate the encouragement and it makes a huge difference when you have that kind of support cheering you on! After looking at my schedule, I realize that we play in Killarney one more time this season on December 31st. I can think of one thing that I won't forget to bring to the game: a 2 Euro coin!
Pete Strobl
petestrobl@gmail.com