Off to Feldkirch…
By Nicole LeBlanc and Deja Sweeny, the Baylor Girls
January 10, 2007

We all arrived in Prague on the 8th of January.  We practiced that night and went to dinner afterwards.  Shortly after dinner, having been in Prague for only about 8 hours, Tim and Cory had a possible job for the two of us.  We had to make a decision of whether or not we wanted to stay to play with a team in Europe before 10am the next day.  This decision was huge and kind of scary.  We had to be able to commit to staying until the end of the team's season in April.

On Wednesday we had an afternoon match vs. the Olymp Praha team, and we knew that we had to be ready to leave after the match.

That night, the 10th, we left for Feldkirch, Austria via a night train.  We started traveling at 8pm and didn't arrive until noon the next day.  It was hard because that night was our try-out with the team and we were very tired from traveling.  Navigating through the train stations was a challenge.  Not many people speak English and we definitely didn't know any German!  We were lucky to find a few people that knew some English and could help us. 

We got to spend some time with the girls that are on this team and they were very nice and helpful.  We asked a lot of questions about the team, the coaching, and the city.  For our try-out we joined the team's practice and the coach and President of the club evaluated us.  We immediately were told where we stood with the team and we are traveling with them for their game this Saturday.  It is important for any player on the tour to ask a lot of questions and find out as much information as possible. The whole experience was intimidating and exciting all at the same time.

Note: The team SKK Feldkirch has 3 current BIP Clients (Americans) which hopefully made this quick transition a little easier for Nicole and Deja. Many thanks to their coach (Edwin Benne of Dutch Men’s National Team fame) and manager (Hans Peter) for giving the girls a chance and taking such good care of them.