Lakeland College

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Day 5: Georgetown/Austin, Texas, Chicago, Ill., and Sheboygan, Wis.

Assistant director of sports information Chris Lindeke brings you daily coverage from Georgetown, Texas, where the Lakeland men's basketball team will play Trinity on Thursday, Dec. 18 and Southwestern on Friday, Dec. 19.

As I begin to write this, it is almost 11:30 p.m. and we have just left O'Hare Airport via charter coach bus for Sheboygan. The interstate is in pretty rough shape - we just went past a couple of accidents and drivers seem to be driving down to about 45-50 miles per hour.

Needless to say, it has been a long day for the Lakeland men's basketball team and the rest of the travel party.

At 9 a.m., a majority of the group headed down to our hotel lobby for continental breakfast. Same spread as usual - cereal, Otis Spunkmeyer muffins, toast, oatmeal, fruit, waffles, coffee, juice and milk.

The guys were given until 11:30 to pack up their stuff. We were to leave the hotel and, after having lunch at CiCi's, head to the airport in Austin for our flight to O'Hare.

We left the hotel on schedule and had lunch at CiCi's. Despite the presence of a salad bar in the buffet-style meal, I wouldn't refer to many of the choices as healthy. The guys loaded their plates with pizza, pepperoni rolls, breadsticks, soup, cinnamon rolls and brownies. It was very tasty, but not something I could do more than once a week.

We arrived at the airport at around 1 p.m. after the 40-minute ride to Austin. The airport was busy - I would assume a lot of holiday travelers. Assistant coach Tyler Bormann again led the crew up to the American Airlines counter and through the security checkpoint.

As we were walking towards our gate, I looked up at the monitors and noticed something blinking next to our flight number - our flight had been delayed to a 6 p.m. take-off from our originally-planned 5:05 departure. We figured this would happen, knowing there was the possibility of some heavy snow in the Chicago area.

Our guys passed the time in a variety of ways. Playing cards was a pretty popular way of passing the time. Freshmen Germell Heard and Hunter Wolf, among others, had a pretty rousing game going in one corner. Others watched the variety of NCAA basketball games on TV - there were a few pretty good games on (Michigan State/Texas, Gonzaga/Connecticut). At some point, a lot of the guys sought reading material for the wait and flight.

After a small delay in boarding, we finally were on the plane somewhere close to 6 p.m. From there on out, the team and the rest of the traveling party showed a lot of patience.

First of all, we didn't actually take off from O'Hare until about 7:45. Three or four different times, we'd hear the pilot over the intercom telling us that the flight control team at O'Hare had pushed our flight back another 15-30 minutes.

It had already been a pretty long day for our guys, but they were troopers. Freshman Eric Vandivier and student assistant coach Andy Marks paged through Sports Illustrated, while freshman Josh Regal looked on as a couple of passengers watched a Denzel Washington movie (the name of the movie escapes me) on a laptop in his row.

Because almost all of the other passengers on our flight had connector flights to catch, our travel party patiently waited while everyone else filed out.

I'm happy to report that we lost just one bag on the entire trip, and it wasn't even a bag. Head coach Aaron Aanonsen patiently waited for the stroller of Ambryn, his soon-to-be 1-year-old daughter, who traveled with us along with Aanonsen's wife, Brye. Unfortunately, it never showed up at our baggage claim area, and it was not found at our gate, either. Hopefully it will turn up soon.

While we were standing there as a group, one particularly enthusiastic young woman asked Aanonsen if our team was the Northwestern University men's basketball team. Some of the guys were flattered, while others questioned the young lady's common sense (Over 90 percent of the traveling party was wearing something with the LC logo on it).

The next 20 minutes or so could be described as a circus, as we tried to hunt down our bus. Just as Coach Bormann called our driver, Ray, we saw his bus drive in behind us. The exhausted group was relieved to see him - freshman Jake Schwarz exclaimed, "We're finally going home!" as we boarded the bus.

After a stop at an oasis in Illinois for a quick, late-night bite to eat, we are finally back to Lakeland just after 2:30 a.m. on Sunday morning. We enjoyed the trip (and the weather), but are happy to be home.

As it stands, the team will take tomorrow off and practice Monday and Tuesday before taking the week from Dec. 24-30 off. The team returns to action on Jan. 2 at Northland College.

Thanks for reading this week and have a fantastic holiday season!

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