Hoops in a foreign land: Midland's Tony Johnson writes about wearing 'USA,' playing ball in Europe

By the Midland Daily News
http://www.ourmidland.com/sports/article_34983c5e-56bd-505c-a748-6479b29...

Arriving home after 10 days traveling around Europe, I have to admit that I had mixed emotions as I was getting ready to go through customs to enter back into the United States at Detroit Metro Airport.

Yes, I was happy to be home, to be able to unpack and get back to the start my summer going into my senior year at Midland High School. But I also felt a bit sad to see an end to what I know was the experience of a life-time.

This experience was wearing "USA" proudly across my chest on a red, white and blue jersey; doing the thing I love to do the most -- play basketball. This was an indescribable feeling, all while getting the chance to travel around Europe and meet people I can now fondly call my friends.

United States of America Athletes International (USAAI) is an organization that selects players to compete in several events overseas each year in the United World Games. As someone selected for this year's "Italian Challenge", I not only got to compete with teams from all around Europe, I got to see and tour cities such as Milan and Venice in Italy and Munich, Germany. We also got to see and experience Klagenfurt, Austria, the actual location of the United World Games 2010. Klagenfurt is also the home of the Euro Cup for soccer, so the stadium was nothing like I have ever seen before.

United World Games is very popular in Europe, drawing about 5,000 athletes from countries all over Europe and selected players from the United States who come together in many different sporting contests, such as basketball, soccer, volleyball and team handball. Team handball was by far the biggest hit at the games and something I never really knew about. All the games were set up in a round-robin style where you get to play every team once, and the top two team played in the final game for the gold medal.

Our USA basketball team played six official games, including a local club game while in Italy. It was helpful to play the club game because there were a few different rules in Europe than here in the United States and it gave us time to practice as a newly formed team, with new coaches. One big rule change is that you cannot take a step before dribbling; you have to dribble first, then take a step. Also, you are allowed an extra step (or two) when driving to the basket. And trust me, it did trip me up a bit in the beginning.

Our team won all five games at the United World Games in Klagenfurt to capture the gold medal. There were a lot of good teams there. They were better than us at ball handling and fundamentals, but we just outsized them and were more athletic.

As I think back to the trip, a few key things will stay fresh in my mind for a long time. The first was playing for two college coaches and learning about the style of coaching at the next level. I was lucky that the head coach, Dave Hammer (from Aquinas College), was from Michigan and I really respected his leadership on and off the court. His assistant, Rod Hathaway, is an AAU coach who has worked with Olivet College. They both really helped us maneuver around Europe and knew how to bring a group of players with different skills, personalities and talents together to really be a team.

Second, playing with teammates that I didn't know gave me some concerns. But the guys on the team were very talented. All of them but me recently graduated and will be attending colleges all over the United States playing college athletics. Together, we learned quickly how to work together, how to live together and how to make the most of this experience. We worked hard, but laughed and had a ton of fun, such as ordering from pictures of the food because we could not read the menus, flipping a coin because we were a bed short in the hotel, and to trying to understand who the foul was on because the ref didn't speak English.

Also, as I had thought (and heard), the culture in Europe was completely different from American culture. We traveled from location to location with the USA girls' basketball team and USA girls' soccer team, both of which were also with USAAI, and we learned together what was socially acceptable and what was not in Europe. There were several times on the trip that the girls weren't allowed to go in certain places if they were wearing shorts. In many European countries, girls are not allowed to show their legs in places like formal restaurants and churches.

Although it rained every day, we were able to enjoy the sightseeing and get a sense of what each of the European cities was like. There were a lot of mountains, and many old and historic buildings, and activities that you just don't find around Midland. For instance, we took a gondola ride in Italy, went to a disco in Austria, and ate authentic Italian pizza.

But to really wrap things up and to share with you the biggest highlight of the entire trip, it was standing on the court the last day of the United World Games listening to the American National Anthem as we received our gold medals for winning the competition. We were honored by taking home the gold.

I know it was not the Olympics, but to me it could have been. At that very moment, I knew what it was to be a proud American and how lucky I am to live in Midland, Michigan in the United States of America.