A Cramped Sleeper Car

by Cheryl Dozier

We took the nine returning members of the UB women's basketball team to Europe in the summer of 2000. We spent five days in Spain, in Calella, which is about 45 minutes outside Barcelona. We went sightseeing at the Olympic venues, and we went to Sagrada Familia, one of the major churches in Barcelona.

From Barcelona, we took the overnight train to Paris. Now, a sleeper train, it's an experience in itself. When I was talking to Al Phillips, who organized the trip, he said, "I can either fly you from Barcelona, or we can go ahead and take the overnight train." I said, "The kids have never done that, and I've never done that. Let's go ahead and take the train."

Well, there are four people to a little sleeper box. The beds fold down, and you're practically on top of each other. The hallways in the train are not very, uh, wide, one might say. And we spent twelve hours in a cramped sleeper car. But everybody was bopping around from room to room, having a really good time. If we had it to do all over again, I would choose to take the train again.

The trip probably could have been a lot easier. But when we sat down and talked about it, Al and I, these were the kinds of situations that I wanted to try and put them in. In Europe we played three games in two days, and it took us four or five hours to get to two of them. Some of those situations that I put the kids into were exhausting.

I wanted to see how we were going to respond. We responded very well. We were 3-1. We came through those situations fighting, so I'll be able to use those moments this year if we have to play back-to-back games in a tournament, or if we have to bus 10 hours to Marshall and then play a game at noon. I learned a lot about the team. The kids learned a lot about themselves and how they could get through things fighting, and how even if they're tired they can dig a little deeper, and that's really what it's all about.

They always know that there's a method to my madness. I always tell them that.