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Notre Dame senior forward Ryan Ayers will be contributing periodically to Irish Insights as the Irish travel to Ireland for an exhibition summer tour. He speaks with Michael Rothstein daily to give updates, which you find here.
Today's Saturday. The days are running together.
We started the day out going to breakfast and then we had to help the coaches out with a coaches' clinic, where we went to Mary Immaculate College, and a lot of local Ireland coaches were there, some high school, some college, I'm sure. It was probably about 30 coaches there in this small gym we ended up going to and we ended up going through our normal routine, like a shootaround. Coach (Mike Brey) talked while we were doing drills, a lot of dummy stuff, 3-on-0, working on our offense and moving without the ball.
We ran through a couple of our sets and the different kind of reads that we do, just to make sure the coaches know about our system and teaching everybody about how we teach the game over here. We did a lot of transition, showing them options there and talked about their game over here with the international game and our game and how we had to adjust and some pointers Coach had to adjust. He did a really good job with that.
Then, we broke out into guards and big, where the bigs went first and Coach (Sean) Kearney talked about some big-man drills and footwork that he wanted to emphasize. Then Coach (Rod) Balanis took the guards and did some things with penetrate-and-pitch and getting into the gap, some of the things that we do that our point guards, our guards are good at. So coaches were able to see that.
We came back to the hotel and packed for the day's trip to Belfast. The trip to Belfast was supposed to be a couple hours trip. But one of the main roads there was flooded because it rains all the time here. So we had to take a detour way here and that took over six hours. We left at 12:30 p.m. and didn't arrive until 6:30-7 p.m. Ireland time.
This has been the worst trip of traveling, but fortunately we've gotten there safely every time. But we just have had to be patient with our traveling, I guess, which kind of stinks but what can you do.
Guys were sleeping, watching DVDs. It was just ridiculous how much the roads were flooded. Even the one we were on, we had to go through this huge puddle, a pond, basically. We didn't think we would actually get through it. It was the most interesting part of the day. We thought all our clothes underneath would get wet but fortunately, they didn't.
It was a long trip. We watched a couple movies on the bus, including The Departed. Everybody enjoyed that movie, it's a good movie. Then, when guys were watching their own movies on DVD players and stuff like that, I was watching "The Office." I'm on Season 3 right now. Haven't really seen a lot of them so I'm just going from Season 1 to 3 and just finished Season 3 and on to 4 now.
Guys played cards, just staying active to escape boredom, I guess.
Eventually, we arrived at La Mon Hotel and Country Club in Belfast and we just got back from dinner, a nice little buffet. It was really good, one of the best meals we've had so far. It was real American, Thanksgiving food with turkey and stuffing and ham and beef. It was very good. It tasted like an American dish, which was nice.
Now, we're hanging out because we have a late wake-up call because we have a game in the afternoon. Today's been more of a travel day. We practiced this morning, just rested and hanging out and now we're in a new city and it should be interesting.
I really enjoyed Limerick. I thought it was a great town and great to be around. It'll be interesting being in Northern Ireland and see what it's like compared to Southern Ireland. It'll be a different atmosphere, which we're looking forward to. But today wasn't too eventful. We got to see the land and all the houses going through Ireland, which was nice where you could see that.
Everything is so green. There's so much livestock and cows and there are little villages along the way, which are pretty neat.
It was just a hangout day, I guess.
Previous Entries: Aug. 15; Aug. 14; Aug. 13; Aug. 12
