Take the good with the BAD!

Hello Everyone,

This week featured a PR visit to a school and a huge road game at Uppsala! The schools here are pretty relaxed. The school was like an elementary and middle school combined. When we first arrived there were young kids sledding down the icy hill. Right next to the brick building and metal bike racks. They did have helmets on so I guess they were kind of safe. I took a turn down the hill and it was rather fun. I’m pretty cautious after my incident back in high school (long story short I tore cartilage sledding down a 2 foot hill). Another example of how relaxed the school was over half of the students were walking the halls, while the other half had headphones in their ears. I guess it has been a while since I was in elementary and middle school, but BACK IN MY DAY that would have never went down!

We spoke to three classes and handed out tickets to the Tuesdays TV game. That is a huge game for the club as the TV station will decide if they will air any other games in Sodertalje based on the crowd. We also stayed around the school for a while signing autographs for the kids. I really enjoy that part of the job. I am pretty good with kids and enjoy them most likely due to all my little siblings. Although there was one kid that kept trying to steal all my tickets and I did want to slap him, but I figured that would be hard to explain to the club why I was in a Swedish jail after a PR trip.

The game in Uppsala was for fifth place in the league. The game was going to be extra tough without our center. I mean we are not that tall of a team anyway, our center is only 6’7” which is not very big in basketball. He is the only player we have that really likes to play with his back to the basket. It defiantly was not our best game played. We were really bad on defense, but luckily for us Uppsala did not play much better either. It was another one of those games where the refs stopped play every 5 seconds. I even picked up an intentional foul when I stripped a guy. We played much better in the second half and won by 12 or something. I had a very solid game scoring 23, and grabbing 11 rebounds with 5 assist and a steal, but it came with a price.

I ruptured a ligament in my knee. Not one of the big ones like the ACL or MCL but some other CL (don’t really know if there are any other CL’s). Anyway it looks like I will be out anywhere between 1-4 weeks which would be 3 or 4 games. It will now make it extremely tough on the team as we have lost 60 mins a game, 35-40 points a game, and 15-20 rebounds a game with the center and I out. The good thing is we have the players that can come in and step up. This could also benefit us during playoffs having a really deep bench. I seem to be a little cursed here in Sodertalje with injuries. I have had more injuries playing in this town then I have had in the previous 7 years. I am staying positive however as we have worked our way into playoff position and just need to maintain. When you play a sport for a living you know there is always a risk of injury. I just really hope I am back on the court when my mother flies over in February as that was one of the main motivators to see me play again.

I will have more time to keep perfecting my art of cooking..


In case you are wondering it is eggs with spinach and onion, bacon, cheesy potatoes, toast with jelly, pineapple juice and of course no meal is complete without the Heinz bottle!

I really just felt like bragging on myself!

Until Next Time!

This is BC gone for now

All BALL!!

Hello Everyone,

This blog is all about Ball! It was a very good week for the kings as we won two this week pushing our win streak to 3. We won on the road against a team that is in front of us by one game. The other one we won at home to the fourth place team in the league.

Tuesday was the away game about two hours from here. We hopped on the big bus and watched Napoleon Dynamite (a MTV movie if you have not heard of it). Coach was not very fond of the movie and threatened to run the guy who brought it if we did not win. I’m not saying that is why we won, but it did add some extra incentive. The game started very evenly with us trading baskets and going into the locker room with a 1 point lead. The second half was totally dominated by us and we ran away with the game winning by 19. I had another solid game scoring 19, with 8 boards and 4 steals.
Saturday was a home game against Solna. We promoted the game on Friday handing out free tickets at Astra Zeneca (the big pharmacy company) as attendance has been the worst they have seen in many years. Hopefully with the great showing we had we can bring some people back. The game started out very similar to the one on Tuesday with us trading baskets and going to the locker room up 1. Then in the third quarter we ran away with the game and ending up winning by 29! Again I had another decent game scoring 17, 5 boards and 3 steals.

When we play defense like we can and control the boards I think we can play with any team in this league. We also are a much more balanced team with 5 to 6 guys scoring in double digits every night. We did have an injury to our center on Saturday and he will most likely miss one game. We have a big game on Friday away against Uppsala. If we can win that game then we will be in 5th place which would be the highest we have been.

Until Next Time!

This is BC gone for now

PC270050.AVI

Welcome to 2010!

Hello Everyone,

These last three or four weeks have flown bye! I kind of wish I could go back and live them again, but no need for looking in the past. I got the memories in my memory bank. It started off with my trip to Prague/Slovakia to spend Christmas with Julian and finished with my fiancé visiting.

I left on the 23rd, the morning after our loss to the top team, but I will get to the games later. I arrived in Prague at 10 AM and was greeted by Julian and his dad (Big BOSS). The funniest thing about me flying to Prague was that there were like 5 other airports that were closer to Julian, but of course I went with the cheapest ticket. That would come back to bite me as I had to board a train at 4:30 in the morning on the 27th for the 7 hour trip back to Prague! (The trip was worth missing out on some sleep). Never the less I wanted to see Prague so I could put it on my list of places I have been. It was a pretty cold and drizzling on us, but we still went to the main squares. I got a good feel for the city and it was beautiful even with the bad weather. We ate these things called Langos similar to a funnel cake only without the sweet. It was the same kind of dough only they put garlic, cheese and ketchup on it (anything with ketchup I will usually love). We also had a Czech beer which was excellent. Julian swears you will not have a better beer then a draft beer in Prague. I will have to agree with him at the moment.



We then started are journey to Ruzomburek in Slovakia. It was about a 6 hour car ride that flew by as we were catching up on all things. We also picked up his brother from his in-laws on the way so he could hang with us for one night. We stayed at his grandma’s apartment that was a 2 minute drive from his parent’s place. Slovakia is like a lot of other countries in Europe that celebrate Christmas on the 24th. They don’t put up the tree until the 24th. The only job while I was there was to help put up the tree. I helped put the tree together then Julian did all the decorating of it. After the tree is up they then have dinner. They make a HUGE dinner and then eat on the leftovers for Christmas day meals. We had cabbage soup, potato salad, pork, fish, and some bread. I loved the cabbage soup!! Then on the 26th they have another big meal of duck, dumplings, soup and potatoes. My goodness they were two unbelievable meals that I’m craving again as I type this.






We really did not do anything real special, but eat and enjoy each other’s company. I watched 3 or 4 Slovakian movies that were folk tales. They show them every Christmas and they are like 50 or 60 years old. I couldn’t understand the language obviously, but Julian was pretty good about translating the important parts. I must say the movies did not crack my top 1,000 list of best movies!! We did go up to the mountain one day. Ruzomburek is surrounded by two mountains and normally has 10,000 winter skiers vacationing there, but there was no snow so that kind of hurt business a little. We also went to the water park one evening. The water is mineral water that comes straight from the ground and it was very warm!! Of course you can’t replace Christmas at home with family, but this was an excellent substitute. The Betko’s are wonderful and Great People! I’m glad they have been a part of my life!

After the great visit to Slovakia I came back to Sweden to spend New Years with Morgan. I picked her up at the airport on the 31st. She spent 9 days here and I took her back to the airport on the 9th of January. She was over here last time I was here so I didn’t really have to play tour guide or anything like that. I must say I was a little disappointed with the lack of things going on for New Years. I guess in the states it is more of a hangout with friends and family, but I don’t know enough ppl here. We just hung out and watched a couple movies then headed down to the lake for the Fireworks. They defiantly didn’t disappoint with that again. I think the fireworks here would beat many Fourth of July firework shows. They are all done by individuals here which makes it twice as dangerous. One of the fireworks misfired and sent little sparks everywhere including a teammate’s jacket. After the lake we went to a teammate’s house for a little while. We did find a pretty fun card game called monopoly deal. We played many games of this, and I was a little disappointed as I was not able to dominate like I did in UNO! After her visit I still want to marry her so I guess you can call her trip a success;)

After a long break we got back on the court for two games this week. We lost one and won one. The first one was up in Plannja which is a pretty tough place to play. They are in the top three right now. There man player is Brandon McKnight who played at Purdue. Once again we had three players on the court from Indiana!! We didn’t play all that bad, but def. had a stretch of about 5 minutes that lost the game for us. I didn’t shoot the ball as well as I would have liked esp. on their soft rims. I went 3-10 from three and 1-2 from 2. I get pretty frustrated with myself when I settle for threes too much. We are right there and we know we can beat them just have to focus in a little more.

The second game was at home, and we have now won 5 in a row at home. It was a pretty sloppy game with the refs feeling they needed to call a foul every 4 seconds on someone, but we played very well defensively and was in control the whole game. I finished with 18, and 8 boards and finally got my first dunk of the season!
We have a very important stretch of about 7 or 8 games where we need to get a lot of wins to get a little breathing room on the playoff line. Right now there are 3 teams that are 8-15 including us and one team that is 9-15 so we are right there but still need a little separation. We have a big away game against the 5th place team on Tuesday.

Until Next Time!

This is BC gone for now