Parker Henes, journalism junior, is a 6-9 forward on the IU Southeast men’s basketball team. He will be blogging from the road as the No. 3 Grenadiers play in the NAIA Men’s Basketball National Championship tournament in Point Lookout, Mo. IUS will face Tabor College in the first round on March 13 at 6:45pm.
Bonding on the bus
By Parker Henes No.34
Indiana University Southeast does in fact have a basketball team. For everyone who didn’t know that, we are actually pretty good. We are currently 25-4 on the season, with the NAIA National Tournament still to play. This tourney is located in Branson, Missouri. It is definitely the longest trip of the season, as well as one of the funniest trips I think I have ever been on as part of a basketball team. We drive 8 hours to play the best competition in the country. Who wouldn’t like that?
As a team I we are very close. We hang out after practices and games all the time.We are forced to be around each other just about every waking moment during the regular season. You would think that seeing the same thirteen people every day would bug you, right? Well the difference with this team is that we really don’t get tired of each other. Most of us actually live together.
I would define this team as a family that happens to have similar interest, who are, unfortunately at the moment, stuck on a bus.
“We only have five players from last year’s team. This means that it’s most of these guys first time playing with us. To have the connection that we have as a team is just amazing. In just six months of playing basketball we have a bigger connection with each other than most families do,” Kegan Clark, senior forward, said after his first nap.
How can a team do this, you might ask. It’s real easy. All of us on this bus have at least one thing in common, basketball. We talk and argue about basketball more than the people on ESPN do, and we aren’t even getting paid. Like today, when everyone was awake Britt, also known as Brandon, started a mock draft.
“Out of all the NBA players, current and retired, who would be on your team?” Britt said.
That was the topic today. Everyone was going around saying who they would have. As soon as someone picked a person, they were officially gone. Britt obviously took MJ. I don’t even know who said he could have first pick, I guess he did. All the greats were flying off the board, and I still wasn’t my turn. When it came to my pick, I took Hakeem Olajuwon. Olajuwon was one of the best big men, if not the best, to ever play the game, maybe behind Shaq.
Of course everyone didn’t agree with my statement. So that started an argument on that subject.
Trying to pass time is one of the hardest things to do on a long bus ride like this. If you can see the pictures that I took you will see that looking outside the window does not help. You see the same thing every single time you look out that thing. When we aren’t arguing about basketball, we usually have our own music playing in our Beats. You are correct, it does seem like every basketball player has a pair of Beats. Music is a person’s way to pass time. When the music turns on, our heads just begin going back and forth, some with more rhythm than others, to the beat of the music, just to pass the time.
I can speak for all of my teammates and say that we are looking forward to playing in this tournament and hope we can go all the way and bring the NAIA tournament trophy where it belongs, on the campus of Indiana University Southeast.
