DAY 14 and 15

9:00 am With sleeping through a 7 am watch alarm and camp at 10, I again miss church. Ouch. But, again a full Irish breakfast awaits us. Also, in the middle of the night, a camper from Sligo staying with us attacks Terry. The kid is a known sleep walker and has Terry by the arms on top of him screaming, “Get ‘em out of here!”

10:00 am Another uneventful day of camp. We beat the kids only 7-4 this day because they play slight amounts of defense.

4:00 pm We give out awards, including player most likely to kick instead of shoot a basketball. There are many candidates for this one.

4:15 pm Now the three hour drive to Claregalway, which is suburb of Limerick, just kidding, Galway.

7;30 pm Our host family is amazing. They have three daughters and a son ranging from 14 to 19. The whole town is back 50 years. Everyone knows everyone, nobody owns a bike lock and kids just come and go from house to house. It’s like the Irish Pleasantvlle. After a great dinner we enjoy some surprisingly adequate warm Coronas. Don’t know if I mentioned this, but ice is as rare as warm weather in this country. Everything except the pints comes luke warm so you better get used to it.

11:00 pm I lug my 40 pound bag up another flight of stairs and prepare to sleep in my 5th bed of the trip. Over night I have weird dream Billy Donovan. I was asking him about his tournament against Creighton and Norfolk State. Huh?

DAY 15
9 am The Irish love their breakfast. Again a huge breakfast of soda bread, bacon, tea, toast and cereal. And since Sligo I have had my precious orange juice every morning.

10 am Camp has ridiculously low turnout. The guy running it has 200 kids in his club and yet he has only 22 kids in attendance. This is even sadder when you factor in that they have brought in a great Spanish professional coach, his interpreter, TK (who has won national league titles), Flo and the incomparable Shaun Haggerty. The reason for this lack of ballers is the economic troubles, a very popular vacation weekend and the poor scheduling of trying to go against the Gaelic football camp. Please see the blog on sports in Ireland, but if you don’t want to read it, just realize that Gaelic is the PRIMARY sport here. Everyone is queer for it.
Lunch is again a spectacular array of sliced meats and various baked goods. They have also cleverly called certain cookies “digestables” to trick you into thinking you need them after every meal. I need them not for digestion, but because they are “gorgeous.”

This weeks “that kid” is Ian. Every camp has “that kid.” Usually there is only one. “That kid” needs a ton of attention, isn’t very good at basketball and makes it their life’s goal to do the opposite of what the coach asks. Most times “that kid” is not evil, just aggravating. Ian fits that mold. Our Spanish coach is loud and boisterous but his interpreter is fairly soft spoken, so it takes extra effort to listen to him. Ian has found it is not worth the extra effort and stares off into space whenever any coach is talking. This would be customary if he was 8, but he is actually 14. More on him later.

5 pm After winding down from camp, Flo and I play two of the local kids in a two on two lowered hoop battle. We take it easy for the most part, but Flo, who has Khalid El Amin’s build, decides he is going to drive in and dunk right on this poor kids head. He almost tears down the hoop and knocks the kid down and begins playfully talking “mad smack.” Later he dunks again, but the kid isn’t too pleased with it and while he dunks he cross body blocks him into the pole. Flo hits the pole, spins and ends up landing on the basket support.

7 pm After this we are going to go play Rounders. I am very curious to play it, but Sinead is not home. Sinead’s house is the Rounder’s house. My curiosity stems from the fact that Rounders and Cricket combine to form the basis for baseball.

9 pm After another great dinner, we go into town for my massive suitcase. It was so large it couldn’t make the trip to Cork. After that little errand, we head down to a local pub for a couple pints. Flo is famous for his ability to finish a pint of Guinness in under eight seconds. It’s pretty amazing. For those non Guinness drinkers, it might be the thickest beer in the world. I told him “I can’t even chug water that fast if I wanted to.” He said, “Neither can I. Why would you want to?” Touche. Touche.