By Mikayla van Loon
A team of under 18 Kilsyth Basketball players have just returned from a trip of a lifetime, touring parts of America and playing some of the best high school basketball teams in the state of Texas.
Leaving on Boxing Day, the team, coaches and parents landed in Los Angeles, before making their way into Texas to visit Houston, Dallas and Fort Worth over 10 days.
Despite a flight cancellation from LA to Houston meaning a 30 hour replacement bus ride, nothing could dampen the mood when arriving in the southern state for a round robin of competitive basketball.
Head coach of the tour team Zac Wuersching said not only was it an incredible opportunity for the boys to play basketball, it gave them a taste of travelling and life outside Australia’s borders.
“Getting the chance to go and travel overseas at 16, have a little bit of independence and chance to experience a different culture is really important just for them as people to grow,” he said.
“From a basketball point of view, they’re at that age where some of them are deciding whether they want to pursue it as a bit more of a career or an opportunity to go over to America on basketball scholarships.
“So it’s a really good chance for them to see what it’s like over there and what it takes to be involved in those really big programs.”
The trip included tours of colleges in Texas, where the Cobras were immersed in the day-to-day life of a basketball scholarship recipient who would practise 20 to 25 hours a week on top of study.
Zac said “sometimes America is built up as this massive basketball powerhouse” but Kilsyth Basketball has quite a history of success in preparing players for scholarships in the US.
“Kilsyth has been pretty lucky, we’ve had a bunch of guys go over with college scholarships. We’ve still got a couple over there at the moment. It definitely gives [the players] a chance to see that it is possible to do that.”
Out of eight games played against some of the best high school basketball teams, Zac said Kilsyth was able to win three but puts some of that down to travel exhaustion.
“We probably could have won a couple more but because of that long bus ride we just didn’t.
“We ended up playing two teams who throughout the season have been ranked in the top 10 in the city of Houston and the team that was ranked number one, we actually ended up losing to by only eight points. So it was a really good effort for them to do that.”
The last trip Kilsyth Basketball facilitated for their players was in 2015-16, although prior to that it was a more common occurrence for junior players.
Pushing for the return of the trip this year, Zac said he saw it as more of an opportunity to give these young people something to look forward to and a way to get them inspired for the future.
“It’s been pretty clear to see with Covid they’ve missed out on a lot. So the chance to do this and from a life experience point, potentially even more so than the basketball experience, was why I was really keen to get involved and make sure it happened,” he said.
Seeing the cross-world relatability between players from Australia and America, Zac said was one of his favourite things but also the way his players carried themselves despite losses.
“The second day of the tournament, we ended up losing the game but one of the parents of the school that was hosting came up to me and said ‘coach I absolutely loved the way you and your players go about it. I want to buy you guys dinner.’
“It turns out this dude had his own food truck, doing Texas barbecue chicken wings and he just loved how the kids competed and carried themselves out on the floor, which was for me as a coach, the scoreboard was irrelevant, we were there for a better part of the experience representing Australia.”
That, among seeing the number one college basketball team play a game and experience the atmosphere, creating a hi-five line for the Houston Rockets game and of course visiting Disneyland at the end of the trip were just some of the highlights.
