Sept. 17, 2009
SPOKANE, Wash. - Junior women's basketball player Janelle Bekkering will be blogging for the next few weeks as she and the Canadian National Team prepares for and participates in the FIBA Championship Sept. 23-27. Check back regularly to see what JBekk has to say.
I was asked to write a blog for the next two weeks about my time here in Brazil with the Canadian National Team as we prepare for the FIBA Americas Championship.
To start off I will explain what I have been up to most of this summer. This summer has been filled with a lot of basketball! It started with tryouts at the end of May, and a two-week training camp before heading off to China to play the Chinese national team. We then had six weeks off to go home, and train individually before our second training camp at the beginning of August in B.C, where we trained for another two weeks and then traveled to Cuba to play its national team. I then I had to the chance to come back to Spokane for little over a week to organize all my classes before heading back to Toronto to train for nine days. We left for Brazil this past Monday at midnight, and had a lovely 11 hour flight through the night. It didn't seem as long as it was because I slept for most of the trip!
So, now here I am in Barueri, Brazil sitting in my hotel room, watching some Law and Order with Portuguese subtitles. We are lucky if we get a few English channels! This morning we got to sleep in a bit, and then had breakfast, and did a lifting/core workout. The food here is actually not too bad compared to the chicken feet, and turtle soup in China! Our practice tonight is a late one, at 7:30 p.m. The qualifying tournament doesn't start until the 23rd, so until then we are getting acclimatized to Brazil with practices and a few exhibition games. Tomorrow we play the Brazilian national team in an exhibition. They are usually are biggest competitor so it will be good to play them and get some game film as well. Internationally there usually isn't a lot of game film on some teams like we have in college, so you just have to be prepared to play against anything.
Well I'm off to go to a team meeting. I'll keep you guys updated on my time here in Brazil! If you are really excited about this and want day to day blog entries, our team has a blog as well at www.canadaball.blogspot.com.
