Diary Series: Jay Young, Assoc. Head Coach - Stony Brook ('Europe: A look back')

I think it was on the last night in Paris that it really hit me what an incredible journey we had all been on for the last 10 days.  It was a beautiful summer night and we had just finished up a team meal in a restaurant across the street from our hotel.  We decided to all walk down to the river Seine get one last glimpse of this incredible city.  Our return to New York would be early the next morning and Coach Pikiell wanted us to enjoy this final night together as a team.  As we headed toward the river, we stumbled upon a little carnival much like the many we have all seen in the ‘’States.”  Coach Pikiell quickly jumped into midseason form organizing a wide variety of matchups to compete in everything from a water guy race to a bean bag toss...a half an hour later, we were walking through the gardens at the Louvre.  I looked at the lights of the Eiffel Tower as saw the team line up for one last picture; it was indeed surreal.

Our trip started ten days earlier as we landed in Dublin, Ireland, a bit jet lagged and blurry-eyed but ready for a once in a lifetime adventure.  It was really just over a year ago that the preparation for our trip began.  The NCAA allows one foreign tour every four years for college basketball teams.  With a veteran group of returning players, our staff figured the timing would be perfect to make our first journey overseas.  It also gave our junior forward Tommy Brenton an opportunity to get some much-needed game minutes after sitting out the previous season with a knee injury.  More importantly, it would give us all the chance for an unbelievable experience that would deepen our bond as a team, and hopefully be a catalyst for successful season.

Dublin was awesome, some of the friendliest people I have ever met.  You know you are in a great country when the opposing coach invites you for a Guinness before the game even begins.  We toured the beautiful countryside surrounding Dublin and stayed next to St. Stephen’s Green, one of the many great parks that call Ireland home.   Tommy was a little rusty at times but we managed to go 2-0 in the Emerald Isle, and we met many great people along the way.  It was awesome to see some of the members of our cross country team, who live near Dublin, at the games.  After three days in Ireland, we boarded a plane for the second leg of our trip, London, England.

Our Windsor, England senior Danny Carter was our official tour guide in his home country as soon as we landed at Gatwick Airport.  Making our way through London and along the Thames, we stopped for some great photo ops: at Big Ben, the London Bridge, and of course my personal favorite, Young’s Pub.  The true highlight of our British adventure was the evening that we traveled to Windsor to see the royal family’s castle and visit the true queen of Windsor, Danny’s mother Janice.  Danny’s mom and dad played host to a travel party of some 25 as we kicked it “Carter style “with a barbeque in his back yard.  The food was great, company better, and the Carters were thoughtful enough to include a cake for Bryan Dougher who was celebrating his 22nd birthday that day.  The next morning we toured Churchill’s War room.  It was an amazing first hand look at the life of Winston Churchill during World War II.  There is still damage to the area just steps from the War Room from German bombs that landed just above the Churchill’s bunker.    We went 1-1 in England playing against some seasoned veterans and headed for our final stop on our tour: Paris, France.

Paris, what can you say about Paris that already hasn’t been said?  Ok, I Googled that but it is simply spectacular.  It was in Paris standing at Place de la Concorde - site of the beheadings of King Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette - among many others that I suggested to our sophomore center Anthony Mayo that the guillotine would be an appropriate punishment for missed ball screen coverage.  We won our last contest vs. the French team Charenton and, luckily for Mayo, his ball screen coverage was solid. 

We were all pretty “spent” as we boarded the bus and head back to campus.  I could hear one of the guys on the team talking to his mom on the phone.  She asked him how the trip was and he said, “it was incredible.”  It was good to know we all felt the same.

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