For the boys it was "back to school" this morning as they attended classes up until lunch with their hosts. Congratulations to Conor Karagiannis and Liam Brown who topped a quiz on American History in their history class. Reporters from Omaha's Channel 6 also arrived at the school and interviewed Liam Thomas and Dane Ristovski. The link below is to the story on the Channel 6 website: http://www.wowt.com/home/headlines/Australian_Team_Visits_Omaha_135040638.html
We farewelled Gross HS after lunch and moved on to our next school in Nebraska, Roncalli Catholic High School ( http://www.roncallicatholic.org/ ). We were warmly welcomed by their Athletic Director, Jim Meister, and went straight into a shoot-around to prepare for our afternoon/evening games.
In the Freshman game we were down 14-24 at half time and even though we lost 32-51 we were much better in the second half, being patient and running through our offence. Our Junior Varsity team showed tremendous spirit, being down early 0-10 but fighting back strong to go into the break up 21-20 after a miraculous three point buzzer beater by Peter Gullotta. Unfortunately Roncalli ran away with the game in the final quarter with the score finishing 35-49. A special mention to Cameron Orr who topped scored with 16 points.
We continue to learn from each game and we are improving. The boys ran the court hard tonight with great determination however Roncalli's shooting was very clinical with an incredibly high percentage in all games. For much of the Varsity game it was like a Basketball version of the movie Pleasantville where every shot goes in and Basketball is played perfectly.
Roncalli were wonderful hosts, putting on a great function after the game and the host families being very welcoming to the boys. Thank you very much to Jim Meister for making the games possible and for all the organisation for our visit.
We head off to Ravenna High School for our third game tomorrow and, as mentioned, the Varsity game will hopefully be live on the internet from 12.45pm Wednesday Sydney time. The game time has been moved forward 15 minutes. The web address is: http://www.ravenna.k12.ne.us/
You can find a full set of today’s photos and videos at the following link:
You can find a full set of today’s photos and videos at the following link:
Best wishes.
