Day 2, in reverse

Our last full day on the island was a rather interesting one, as I'll try to illustrate below...

6:45--One of our players leaves for home, having had a grandparent pass away earlier in the week. Her travel debacle will be detailed in the next blog.
9:15--Supposed to leave for a practice at a different gym than the one we played our games at. However, we had 6 different players late for the taxi.

9:50--Arrive at the BCB Middle School on St. Thomas, where we were to practice from 10:00-noon. Walk into a rubber-floor 80-foot floor gym with 4 hoops and approximately 392 kids running around.
Luckily, the PE "teacher", Avery, ended up being one of the best people I met on the island. Avery says that the tournament director never called him to confirm the practice time. And, needless to say, the Island Times people failed to tell us that the gym would be the worst gym that we would ever walk into. However, Avery is gracious enough to clear the gym of most of the kids and let us practice, which, due to the poor floor, consisted essentially of running and more running.

The "best" kids were allowed to stay and watch us practice. It was a rather eye-opening talk with some of them afterward. The kids were absolutely mesmerized by pre-wrap. Many of them had never seen anyone get their ankle taped. The boys' favorite player on our team was our only left-handed player....apparently being left-handed is considered to be lucky in the Virgin Islands.

Our practice was cut short by roughly 45 minutes for a reason that every US team has to deal with--a steel-drum band began setting up for a school assembly.

12:15--Get back to resort to eat lunch, which was KFC. It was honestly one of the 2 best meals I ate all week long on the island. For some reason, the St Thomas KFC has french fries for a side item, and the gravy comes in styrofoam shot glasses.

1:50--Leave for a shopping excursion to St John, another one of the Virgin Islands. We had to take a ferry across the gulf to get to the island.

4:15--Leave island early. Very bored. St John was a very small, extremely expensive island.

5:00--Find out that some of the other kids not very bored, as five of them got temporarily lost in the woods of the National Park on the island en route to the beach.

7:00--Kristen and I had a nice, relaxing dinner in the upscale restaurant on the resort. This was the best meal I had all week.

8:45--For dessert, one of our players comes to our room complaining of foot pain. Turns out she stepped on what we believed was a sea urchin. She went directly to an Urgent Care facility when we got back from our trip from Hell the next day and found out that she had a rock and some glass in the cut.

Our head coach rooted around inside of her heel with various objects to try to get the rock out, including a nail file, a small metal implement designed to do Lord knows what, and a fingernail clipper.

We sent her away in tremendous pain after an hour of digging away inside her heel.

10:40--Ended the night by going to the pool and watching a lot of white people dance awkwardly.