The Bard College men's basketball team leaves Wednesday for Ireland, where it will see some sights, play basketball and make memories as part of the program's first-ever trip abroad.
Head coach Adam Turner, a former player at Bard, sees the trip as the culmination of one of the several goals he set for himself when he took over the program a couple of years ago.
"When I got the job, I had a few enhancements I wanted to make there were going to separate us from the average Div. III program," Turner said. "One was the idea of going abroad, which is extremely popular at the Div. I level where they have enough money to fund it every four years. I wanted to add it to the Bard experience, to make it stand out from other programs, and to reward the players."
The basketball program raised the money for the eight-day trip itself, mailing fundraising letters to friends and relatives of players, holding an alumni game, staffing seven 'Kids Night Out' events, and hosting an AAU tournament. Independent donations were also sought and still are.
Bard will fly out of Newark, N.J., Wednesdsay to Dublin, where it will stay for three days before spending the rest of the trip in Cork. They'll fly back to Philadelphia from Cork on Aug. 25.
Turner will travel with assistant coach Alexei Phillips, also a Bard graduate; first-year players aren't eligible, so only eight players will go. They are seniors
Yonah Greenstein and
Matt Shubert, junior
Jeremy Arnstein, and sophomores
Lamar Powell,
Ben Kane,
Carlos Gadelha and
Alvaro Llanes.
Christian Marghella, who graduated in May, will also participate.
The Raptors will play three games while there, two against teams in Ireland's SuperLeague, which is the country's premier men's professional basketball league.
On Saturday, Bard will play against the Tolka Rovers in Dublin. The Rovers are a club team.
On Monday, Aug. 22, Bard will take on Neptune, which lost in the SuperLeague championship game in late March. Neptune is led by 6-foot-4 forward Michael Bonaparte, who finished second in the SuperLeague in scoring last season with 27.1 points per game. He played collegiately at the NAIA level at the College of the Ozarks.
The next day, the Raptors will play the UCC Demons in Cork. The Demons are led by 6-7, 220-pound Marcus Van, who played collegiately at Central Michigan. SuperLeague teams are allowed one American player on each roster.
For the SuperLeague teams, Bard arrives at the start of training camp.
"It may not be elite athleticism or quickness we'll see," Turner said. "But we'll see an extremely high level of basketball IQ. Most of these guys are grown men in their late twenties or early thirties. They have a wealth of experience and the physicality will be there; they'll be brutal games and will prepare us for the type of front lines we're going to be facing in the Liberty League."
Members of the basketball team arrived at Bard to begin training for the trip on Aug. 10.
"One of my missions coming into this job was to create a program that was going to help players maximize their college experience," Turner said. "To prepare them for whatever's next in their lives. Experiencing different cultures is a huge part of human development. To be able to do that in conjunction with basketball enhances it ten-fold."
Note: Anyone who wishes to donate should contact coach Turner at turner@bard.edu
