USU women’s basketball to spend week in Mexico
A pair of large duffel bags stuffed with deflated basketballs rests on the floor of a conference room inside the Wayne Estes Center. The bags, part of Utah State women’s basketball coach Jerry Finkbeiner’s final preparations for an upcoming team trip, will travel over 2,000 miles before being inflated and distributed as part of USU’s newest and most ambitious athletics tradition.
Saturday morning, USU women’s basketball program embarks on its first ever international outing.
Coach Finkbeiner and his new-look team of Aggies are headed to Mexico for a week of basketball games, clinics and practices in what should prove to be a valuable learning experience for a relatively inexperienced squad.
“With every team I’ve done this with, it’s been a building process for the program and has been an incredible experience,” Finkbeiner said. “Of all the girls I’ve coached through the last 20 years, I bet you 10 out of 10 would say the highlight of their career playing for me, playing for our program, has always been our international experience. Working with kids, playing with international rules, playing in different arenas and the experience that comes with it.”
With nine of the Aggies’ 15 players brand new to the program this year, experience is a rare commodity. While the NCAA prevents teams from exceeding a certain number of practice hours in the offseason, it also allows for programs to travel abroad once every four years.
“In the past at the previous schools I’ve been at I’ve done this once every four years,” Finkbeiner said. “If you’re not going on a trip, you have two hours a week with your team. This trip allows us ten full practices up to three hours each, so we’re actually putting 30 extra hours of teamwork into this trip that we wouldn’t have gotten any other way.”
The extra practice time will be spread throughout a marathon seven-day period, which includes four games and at least two clinics in five days.
“It’s not just a fun little trip, there are a lot of variables to it,” Finkbeiner said. “We’re trying to stretch our team physically through basketball, we’re trying to stretch them emotionally through a new culture, and then obviously we’re trying to challenge ourselves to really tie things together and really come back tight and ready for the season coming up.”
In addition to learning how to trust one another on the basketball court, the team will also spend 30 to 45 minutes each day with Kandy Newton, a specialist in team chemistry and growth. The talks will be held without coaches present, covering a range of topics from goal-setting to hurdles that can cause a team to fall apart. Each player will also be asked to keep a nightly journal of their day’s experiences.
The physical and emotional rigors of the trip are purposeful, designed to mold a team currently without form into a competitive unit by the regular season.
“Our first game is Sunday afternoon, it’s a practice game in a town called Progresso,” Finkbeiner said. “It’s a little gym with a tin roof. It’s going to be 115 degrees with no air conditioning. That’s part of the experience.”
Not all of the game day conditions will be as harsh — Tuesday the Aggies will face off in a brand new air conditioned 6,000-seat arena, just the second team to ever play in the facility.
The Aggies’ last day in Cozumel is reserved for recovery and the acquisition of sunburns, a deserved treat after a week of travel and physical exertion. Upon their return to Utah, USU’s coaching staff will give the team a break before regular season practice begins October 5. However, it may not be long until Aggie basketball returns to Mexico. Coach Finkbeiner is already tracking down the possibility of hosting an international tournament during the holidays.
“When I get back the first thing I’m going to do is contact our Mountain West people,” Finkbeiner said. “I’ve got a couple of other schools I’ve already talked to about maybe creating a Mountain West versus Big Sky challenge, and have two teams from the Mountain West and two teams from the Big Sky, Sun Belt or WAC meet down there and play a two-game tournament.”
Whether it’s a multi-conference tourney or a visit from the program every four years, coach Finkbeiner is determined to leave USU women’s basketball’s positive footprint in Mexico, and to lay groundwork for many happy returns.
“Hopefully this is not a one-and-done thing in that part of the world for Utah State women’s basketball,” Finkbeiner said. “Hopefully this can be a springboard for other programs.”