Former Sonoma State All-American Vince Inglima is currently in his second season playing for the Dandenong Rangers of the Big V League in Australia.  We asked him to contribute an online journal of his experiences in the 'land down under'.  Luckily for us, Vince was happy to oblige.  Enjoy!

August 21, 2008

Despite my poor post-season attitude, I thought it best to have some kind of wrap-up on the old blog.  I’m sure everyone is feeling a bit unsatisfied with the abrupt end to my updates, but I assure you not as much as I am.

First, my injured foot.  The ultrasounds showed a tear in my plantar fascia as well as in my plantar ligament.  These are the things that attach the heal to the ball of your foot.  Apparently it was a bit of a freak thing.  I landed on it just right to cause them to give way.  Now, in one regard, it isn’t that bad because it will not require any kind of surgery to fix.  On the other hand, it is a very slow healing injury.  We are trying to speed that process up by getting a cortisone shot next week.

Considering that the season is over, the injury hasn’t been too inconvenient (other than the crutches, limping, and pain).  The real issue is that I was planning on going to Europe to play this October.  There have been a few nibbles on the line that we cast a few weeks back, so I’m pretty frustrated by that situation.  If I can’t get myself right, then it may have to wait until next year.

Meanwhile back with the Rangers, we are getting ready to go on ‘Man Trip 2008’.  This is basically a weekend where we take a road trip to the country and binge drink, barbeque, and watch football (Aussie Rules of course).  This is coming in two week’s time, so the excitement is building rapidly.  I missed last year’s trip because I foolishly returned home to complete my degree.  Thankfully, with that minor detail in the books, I can stay for the revelry.  I hope that I survive.

Well that about does it from here.  It’s been a pleasure writing these for you all.  I hope someone other than my parents got a bit of amusement out of it.  I’ll be heading back home in about a month, just in time for my fifth consecutive winter.  Vitamin D is overrated anyway.

Hoo roo from down under.  Maybe I’ll get another run on the site if I’m in Europe in the next couple months.  One can only hope.

“Don’t cry because it’s over; smile because it happened.” – Dr. Seuss

vinsanity_3@yahoo.com


August 3, 2008

Well.  Things have come to an abrupt and unexpected end here at Dandenong.  After winning the regular season title, we’ve been bounced from the playoffs in two straight games.  Adding injury to insult, I hurt my foot in the first quarter and sat out almost the entire game.  We aren’t sure exactly what happened.  The only thing I am sure of is that it was/is incredibly painful.  I’ll be going to the doctor tomorrow to get it checked out.  It is particularly devastating having to sit and watch your team lose because you are unable to play.  Especially losing to Sandringham.  I’m not exactly up for being witty and clever at the moment (some would argue that I never have been), so I suppose we’ll just keep this one brief.  I’m sure the “Man Trip 2008” will cheer me up.  I’ll fill you in on that a little later.

July 19, 2008

Well… things didn’t go as smoothly as was desired last Saturday.  We faced the Melbourne Tigers at the dome in the first round of playoffs.  Mind you, since we finished as the top side in the competition, this game was only to determine future home court advantage.  Nonetheless, we lost in a barn burner 113-111.  Not great.  We didn’t deserve to win, but we did have our chances.  I went 4 of 8 from the free throw line in the fourth quarter, which is not going to win you many games.

Enough of that.  This weekend we play the dreaded Sandringham Sabres again.  The winner of that game is in the Big V Grand Final (that is a three game series).  So we’ll be looking to bounce back against the rivals.  It is always great to play the Sabres because you know its going to be a battle.  No two teams dislike each other more.  Did I mention that they wear ridiculous orange uniforms?  That’s not good for anything.

So now we’re all up to date.  A win on Saturday puts us in the Grand Final and also gives us an automatic bid into the National Playoffs down the road.  A loss changes my ticket and sends me home a lot earlier than expected.  Lets hope for the former over the latter.


July 17, 2008

Living in Melbourne is pretty similar to living in California.  The weather is pretty much the same, the people are laid back, and everyone drives a Japanese car.  The two glaring differences are the wildlife and the Mexican food. 

Instead of a raccoon digging through your trash can, you have an opossum peeing on your car.  Instead of crows wandering the sidewalks, you see magpies (these are black and white birds that make a noise I equate to an 80’s computer game sound effect).  Driving through the country, you won’t hit a deer, but you might hit a kangaroo.  Coyotes don’t wander through the woods; dingos wander through the bush.
Koalas are around, but you never see them because they are way up in the tops of trees.  They sleep something like 20 hours a day anyway (definitely not viewer friendly).  The crocodiles are all up north in the warmer climate of Queensland.  Thankfully I don’t have to worry about them.

Although nine of the ten deadliest animals in the world live in Australia  (so I’ve been told), I don’t actually encounter anything very life threatening around these parts.  The outskirts of a city of four million is not exactly a wildlife sanctuary.  Also, considering how cold it gets here in the winter (we are down here near Antarctica and all), most of the truly frightening things don’t frequent the area.  The scariest things we have around here are the massive, palm-sized spiders.  Apparently they aren’t poisonous, but they look capable of gnawing off your finger if they were so inclined. 

As for the Mexican food… it is appalling.  I’ve been spoiled by delicious and cheap Mexican food for as long as I can remember, and now I’ve been cut off.  I realize that I am a long way from Mexico, but something needs to be done.  The few Mexican food places around are pretty average and cost heaps.  A couple chicken enchiladas and a taco with rice and beans ran me $26.  Disgraceful.  I’m off the stuff until I get back.  I don’t want to taint my palate.


July 14, 2008

The Rangers secured a massive road win on Saturday going down to Sandringham and beating the Sabres.  Things were not looking good early, or late.  After five minutes of the game we were down 18-5.  We righted the ship to go up by one at halftime, but subsequently fell behind by double digits again in the third.  But, as the Rangers do, we fought on.  We chipped away at the lead throughout the fourth and eventually got in front with 1:45 to go.  It was a pretty exciting game, even though I’m sure that it isn’t translating well into writing.  That win secures the top spot for playoffs and the luxury of never having a road elimination game.  Our two big threats will be Melbourne and Sandringham (each having given us a loss this year).

July 9, 2008

The whole driving on the left side of the road thing is not a rough as it seems.  Sure, I’ve made my share of blunders along the way, but it is all part of the learning process.  I found that the most challenging thing to do in the first week was keep the car in the lane.  Since I was sitting on the right side of the vehicle, I kept drifting left to compensate.  Interestingly enough, people weren’t too thrilled about that habit.  This did teach me that road rage is an international phenomenon.

Major intersections are easy because everything is marked so well, but when you get into the small areas, I still take a quick moment to get my bearings.  This is because of a minor slip-up last year.  I pulled out of a parking lot and swung around onto the street and pulled up to stoplight.  I wanted to turn right (which is across traffic, in the same way as a left turn is in civilization).  Directly ahead were two lanes of cars facing me.  I thought, “This is an oddly set up intersection.”  As I mulled over what the city planners had in mind when creating this arrangement, I casually looked over to my left.  I made eye contact with the driver in the next car over and rec eived back a look of confusion and disdain.  This shocked me back to my senses and I was able to throw the car in reverse and back away from the intersection and into the parking lot just as the lights changed and the opposing cars came through.  Makes for a good story now, but I wasn’t very amused at the time.

Since the club provides me with the car, I guess it won’t be that bad if I crash it sometime.  It would serve them right for the vehicle they make me drive around in.  It is a Mazda 2.  I didn’t even know there existed a Mazda 2.  It is quite possibly the most feminine vehicle in production.  It looks like an oversized jelly bean.  To make matters worse, it is cherry red… a cherry red Mazda 2.  In hindsight, that might have been the reason for the look of confusion and disdain coming from the guy next to me.  My being on the wrong side of the road was the least of his concerns.



July 4, 2008

Happy Independence Day everyone!  The celebrations around here are not quite as big as in the US, but I’m sure they are just as excited.  I’ll try to find a liquor store that sells Budweiser and crack one open in observance.  This is a doubly important day for me, since it is not only American Independence Day but also (and possibly more importantly) my reverse birthday!  Since the rest of the world swaps the month and day when displaying the date (ie. DD/MM/YY instead of MM/DD/YY), my April 7th birthday looks a lot like July 4th to my American eyes.  Gifts are not expected but greatly appreciated.

The Australian school calendar is made up of four quarters.  Each quarter is separated by a two week holiday, except for the long summer break (over Christmas), which is six weeks.  This works out great for the kids and teachers because they get a few breaks throughout the year.  It is terrible for me.  For me, school holidays means one thing: camp season.  Two weeks straight of seven hour days coaching kids who, at best, have a mild and passing interest in basketball.  That dreaded time has snuck up on me once again…

First up is everyone’s favo(u)rite: the “Vince Inglima Supercamp” featuring star US import Vince Inglima.  This camp is held at Dandenong and is a hugely popular event for a very small percentage of kids from a very small section of Melbourne.  It is glorified child minding, and it isn’t all that glorious.  But I suffer through for my art.

Next are the ITC (Intensive Training & Coaching) Camps.  They are put on by Basketball Victoria (the governing body of state basketball).  This is where the best players in the city come together to be selected onto the regional team for their age group.  So, everyone is there to be seen and to be put through a challenging process. 

This is all well and good, except that everything I just explained to you all was never expressed to me last year.  I heard that I was coaching at a camp, so I went into Supercamp mode.  Needless to say, my group had a noticeably different experience than the other groups.  We would do the drills and stuff we were supposed to do, but when they would get bored, I would break into a game of Knockout or Base-ketball or Jailbreak or something.  Then the losing team would be punished by having to do cartwheels,  bear crawls, the Macarena, the hokey-pokey, or maybe even sing “I’m a little teapot” (only if I was feeling particularly vicious).  My group would be laughing and dancing around while the group on the next court would be getting yelled at.  The kids loved it, but there is a distinct possibility that I ruined a few of their careers.  Such is life…

The regular season is creeping to an end.  We have three games left, but only one of any consequence.  Next weekend we’ll face the rival Sandringham Sabres.  They are in second place, so the winner of that game will most likely finish in the top spot.  I’m looking ahead to that since they beat us earlier in the year (plus they wear these hideous orange uniforms that are no good for anything).

Onya mates.


June 24, 2008

Sport is set up much differently outside of North America.  There really is no integration of school and athletics.  Instead, there are sporting clubs that have their own facilities and whatnot that run the entire operation.  These clubs have junior representative teams that go around and play all the other clubs.  So, from age 10 onward, you are molded into a good little Dandenong Ranger (all the while paying the club for this service).  Once you reach 20, if you are good enough, it is your chance to reap the rewards of that investment in your basketball future.  That is when you move into senior basketball, and you start collecting the checks rather than signing them away. 

There is no draft or anything of that nature here, so players move around quite a bit.  This is especially true for the imports (Americans).  I’ve run into a lot of familiar faces wearing different colors this season.  I’ve never been known to make many friends on the basketball court, but I always try to play nice with the other imports… but, there are certainly exceptions to that rule.

Speaking of earning wages (what a great segue), the Rangers put a hurting on Diamond Valley this week.  I don’t want to get into specifics, but let’s just say that the Celtics would have been in trouble had they crossed paths with the Ranger Train this weekend.  Enough about the team, the biggest news coming out of the game was that I secured eleven rebounds.  This may not seem monumental to some (most anyone for that matter), but it represents my first professional double-double.  Thank you, but no applause is necessary… really, you’re too kind.

Finally, I would like to express my disappointment in all of you for allowing the US to fall into second place in the world.  I must say, it comes as a major surprise.  And to make things worse, it is Australia who has passed us up for the top spot.  So, given my current situation, I’ve had to take it on the chin many times in the last week.  I was in denial at first, but I looked it up for myself and it is true:  Australia is now the fattest country in the world.  You can’t argue with the facts.  Fellow countrymen, get used to being second best, or go ahead and add that extra piece of bacon to breakfast for Uncle Sam… I know what I’m gonna do.

Ta


June 18, 2008

Australia is a world renowned sporting nation.  The people around here just can’t get enough of it.  They can get 8,000 or more people to watch swimming.  Tens of thousands of people attend cricket matches.  Now, those of you who are uninitiated to the game of cricket, consider yourselves lucky.  A cricket match is played for eight hours a day, for FIVE days!  Anyone who complains about how boring baseball is, I dare you to watch three hours of cricket… you may slip into a coma.

But all that is just small beans compared to the Victorian mega-sport called Australian Rules football.  I will not get into the details of this sport since I have neither the time nor vernacular to do it justice.  Needless to say, it is quite a spectacle, and boy do they love it here.  Melbourne lives on its football (note: American football is never to be referred to as just “football”; for that matter, neither is soccer).  The major article on the front page of the newspaper today was about how the grand final game might be moved from 3pm to 5pm in a few years.  Front page news regarding a potential two hour delay of a football game in seasons to come.  And boy is it causing a stir.  The sports-talk radio station is having a field day with it.  There are ten football teams in the state of Victoria (out of 16 in the entire league).  Even so, each one of them gets 30,000 to 80,000 fans to their games. 

Basketball might be the only sport in this country that can’t hold people’s attention, despite my best efforts to demonstrate fundamental, no-frills action.  Australia is probably the one country in the world in which basketball isn’t growing.  Sometimes it feels like I’m in the movie “Semi-Pro”.  I don’t have to wrestle any bears at half-time to increase attendance, though… I mean, yet.

This last weekend we split our two games on the road.  We lost a pretty ugly game 99-94 on Saturday, but bounced back with a dominating 106-60 win on Sunday.  Currently we still sit atop the standings at 13-2.  So we got that going for us, which is nice.  We head out to the bush this weekend to play Diamond Valley.  Their “stadium” is as poorly lit as it is insulated.  And it will be an ice box in there Saturday night because this weekend is forecasted as very cold (it is winter down in these parts, remember).  I can’t wait to return to the friendly confines of the Ranger Dome*, but that isn’t for another couple of weeks. 

Hooroo.

* Dandenong Basketball Stadium is not a dome, and in no way resembles any type of domelike structure.  In fact, I don’t know if I’ve ever seen a more squarely shaped building.


June 11, 2008

Despite whatever I may think, practicing and playing basketball is only a portion of my job down here.  As the American Import on the team, I have a great deal of responsibility off the court as well as on.  First and foremost, I’m supposed to be an incredible basketball player (done and done).  But that is really just the tip of the iceberg.  In a lot of ways, I’m the entire public relations department of the organization.  Whenever there is an event taking place in Dandenong they make sure that I’m there.  Most of my time at such events last year was spent responding to people’s questions about the previous import, and where he’d gone.  Thankfully, I have a bit more profile now, so I’m not just the messenger of the bad news that Lester Strong is not going to be showing up.

Those events don’t come up too often, so the majority of my time is spent traveling around the greater Melbourne area doing clinics for all the primary (elementary) school kids.  This can be quite an adventure.  Since basketball is not exactly the national pastime here, most of these kids are a disgrace to the game.  The kids are usually pretty excited to find out that I’m from America.  They enjoy hearing my accent and I’m immediately ‘cool’.  Since I’m from America, it is assumed that I know everyone else from America.  My list of friends keeps growing… it now includes Michael Jordan, 50 Cent, and Britney Spears.  I just go along with whatever they say.

The other day I did one such clinic with a teammate of mine, Ash Cannan.  One of the groups had a kid from America in it, and he sure wanted to make sure we knew that.  Anyway, he was a real pain.  At the end of the session, Ash walks up to me shaking his head and says, “Typical American…”  I didn’t really have much to come back with, considering the kid in question, except that he was from Boston, which explains a lot.  The tables turned with the very next group, though.  We had another monster child, but this time he was a redhead like Mr. Cannan (although Ash would argue that it’s “auburn”).  With the karmic balance restored, we were able to continue on building the foundation of the next generation of Australian basketballers.  If Australia wins the gold medal at the 2024 Olympics, I think it is safe to say that I played a major role in their success.

This weekend there are no games because it is the Queen’s Birthday long weekend.  It is just one of the many leftover Briticisms that dot the culture down here.  They also still have the Stamp Tax.  I found that pretty amusing since the Stamp Act was why we fought the Revolutionary War (I suppose there might have been a couple other issues).  I guess when there is a public holiday in the balance, there should be some pretty compelling reason to get rid of it (not actually having a Queen must not be compelling enough).

Don’t tread on me.  Cheers.


June 2, 2008

Hello everyone, and welcome aboard the Ranger Train!  I’ve been approached to do this blog for the SSU website, and figuring they must be really hurting for content this time of year, I decided to accept the opportunity.  Granted, my good friend and former teammate Kevin Christensen got his blog before he even stepped foot in a foreign country, while I’m already halfway through my second season, but that is neither here nor there.  It is a pleasure to get the call-up nonetheless.

Now, considering the aforementioned time I’ve already spent here… we will need to do a bit of catch-up.  Last season was a resounding success in its ultimate failure.  The league in which I play is the second tier of Australian basketball (did I mention I’m in Australia?).  The top league is well regarded internationally and very highly paid.  My league is neither of the above.  The previous “import” (American) was a great player, great guy, and great athlete.  Now I struggle to even maintain one of those traits on a given day, so I was in for an uphill battle.  The league is limited to at most two imports per team (I’m the only American on the Dandenong Rangers).  Consequently, you are expected to do great things from day one.  Also, your job involves a lot more than just basketball, but we’ll get into all that at another time.

Well, long story short, I managed through a couple tough weeks early in the year before I caught my stride.  Once things clicked on our team, we were hard to beat.  We ended up plowing through our division (the Big V) and all the way to the national finals.  That is where the fairytale ends as we lost to a Cairns team that was very good (their center is projected to go in the first round of the NBA draft next month).  All in all, I had a great time and played pretty well.  I lead the national tournament in scoring at 26.7ppg, which secured me a contract back with the Rangers this season.

This season has gone pretty splendidly so far as well.  We are currently 12-1 and sitting atop the ladder (standings) of the Big V.  However, our one loss came at the hands of the dreaded Sandringham Sabres!  The Sabres are Dandenong’s arch-rivals.  We have been one-two in the Big V for the last three seasons.  As if losing to them wasn’t enough, it happened on our home court (snapping our 28-game home winning streak) and on ANZAC Day (the Australian’s version of Veteran’s Day).  I was disgusted.  The Sandringham coach and I have a long standing feud (as long as one and a half seasons can produce), so it really irks me that he’s got one up on us.  Maybe I’ll discuss the feud with you all at another time.

Anyway, I hope that brings you up to speed somewhat.  I’ll try to weave a bit of history into these if possible.  Much of the novelty of Australia has worn off for me now.  I like to consider myself just your average Aussie bloke.  Yet for some reason, I need only say one word and they know I’m American… doesn’t even matter which one.  What can you do? 

G’day.