Suwanee, GA - Today is the second day of this large tournament just north of Atlanta. Yesterday began with 152 teams, and by the end of the night, that number was whittled to 76. At the end of two rounds today, that number should be reduced to 19.
In the absence of pictures for now, here's the setting........
This is a beautiful area, full of lush greenery and wide open spaces. But the price residents pay for this is deluge rain at times, and constant humidity. People's ideas of "not that far away" here means the destination is at least 3-5 miles out.
The Suwanee Sports Academy and the Dobbs Center are the sites for this tournament. SSA is a nice facility with two large gyms that house eight courts. The Dobbs Center is several miles down the road, and has no air conditioning. There are eight courts there as well, and playing there is a miserable experience. Heck, it's not fun to be a spectator. We are all wondering why Michael T. White would choose to have Dobbs Center as one of his locations - especially in Georgia in the summertime. Fortunately, however, most teams will only play there once.
The impressive array of teams here are from all over the country. It's really a privilege to be able to see teams I would never see otherwise.....New York, Tennessee, Florida, Virginia and Texas teams, to name a few. I've seen a lot of talent so far, and have stories in the works that I don't want to get too much into now because I haven't yet conducted the interviews. But lots of interesting teams, people and situations here.
There are also a heckuva lot of coaches in attendance. I've seen every coach from the PAC-10, and coaches from a few colleges I've never heard of before.
At our hotel, there are interesting folks. I met an east coast basketball mom yesterday who gave me one of my story ideas. Late last night I wandered into the dining room to use the microwave and ran into a low-key drinking party. It was some coaches and parents from a Virginia team. They were pretty funny; invited me to join them. It's fun because wherever we go, people are speaking girl's basketball, i.e. that's what the conversations are about. I wish I could live in that world more often.
Besides the humidity, the three-hour time difference is a big adjustment. Traveling east is always more difficult than going west.
More later.....gotta chill for a bit because there are three more games I'm going to check out tonight. Looking forward to posting the pictures.
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5 comments:
Nike Nationals in Augusta, fantastic competition, Geno the man taking it all in, WCP 4-0, Calswish 3-1(lost to DFW by 3, great game), Taurasi 3-1, great to see to socal teams in Elite 8.
Hey! You should write up a game report for us.
well u were right about Essence but Flight I think is the team to beat due to there depth, Banks is a gem for Uconn, Massengale will be for whoever, Stewart from Belles, Jefferson (whos was def snubbed) best of the PG bunch from DFW, Samuelson carying Swish, Adams from WCP. Taurasi seems to be imploding which is a shame as they have the 2 bigs in Beebe and Cooper but not good guard play.
Ah, very interesting. Keep that info coming - love to hear it and wish I could be in two places at once.
Well Flight took the title over DFW in a close one, as I predicted they are stacked and the national influx of players paid off for them this year. The fact that the socal girls did so well in this amazing tournament just shows how much talent we have.
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