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For the
second straight year, a group from Jordan Brand
will travel to Europe -- this time to Vilnius,
Lithuania -- for a two-day training camp with 40
of the top prospects in the world from March
4-9. Ten players will be selected as the
Most Valuable Players from the camp and they
will travel to the United States in April, along
with six players from other regions of the world
to compete in the second annual
International Game as part of the Jordan Brand Classic
on Saturday, April 18th at Madison Square Garden in New
York City. The following is a blog and daily photo
gallery from Kevin Foley, who will be along for the
trip.
Vilnius,
Lithuania (March 7): Boy was this
a busy day. We left the hotel at 8 am to
get to the Sarunas Basketball Academy for Day 1
of the Jordan Brand Classic Camp. All 40
players and their country managers made it in on
time and we were all ready to hit the
court.
The
morning session was run by Chris Thomas of SPARQ
training who stretched the players, demonstrated
basketball-specific drills and helped show some
core training techniques. It was very
eye-opening for a lot of the players who were
hurting about 30 minutes into the two-hour
session. Ganon Baker ran the afternoon
basketball skills development session and worked
with the kids on a series of dribbling drills.
The final
evening session focused on the competition-side
of the camp as players competed in a series of
5-on-5 mini-games to keep the intensity high and
the on-court games exciting. The talent
was absolutely amazing as kids played their
hearts out looking to be one of the 10 MVPs
selected to go to New York City. -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
We did not
get back to the hotel until 9:00 pm after many
hours in the gym. After quick showers, we
headed over to Luky's which is a local popular
restaurant. We were joined by all of the
Nike country managers who chaperoned their
players on the trip. It was pretty amazing
to sit at dinner with so many people from
around the world -- Spain, France, Italy,
Estonia, United Kingdom, Slovenia, Greece,
Israel, Germany, Russia, Turkey and
Serbia. They were our bridges all week
across the language barrier, however it was
evident during the day that basketball truly is
it's own global language. It is amazing
how hand signals and even body language is
universal in the game. Dinner
was phenomenal -- I had a pepper-crusted steak
and potatoes. However, it took absolutely
forever. We got to the restaurant by 9:30
and we did not get our meals until almost three
hours later. There were a lot of very
hungry people to say the least. On the
menu were venison and beaver, but the most
puzzling item was a stuffed black bear in the
corner, that was covered by a blanket.
When we asked the waitress, she said that she
couldn't explain why, but they can't show it
anymore. Hmmm ... Tomorrow
is the second and final day of camp. Then
we are heading over to a nice dinner at Sarunas'
house. It might be a long night -- and I
leave from my hotel at 5 am on Monday.
Wish me luck! As always,
feel free to drop
me an email if you have any comments,
questions or recommendations for site-seeing
here.
Stay
tuned!!!! |
