13U Travel Update

Travel Update: It's been a few days since I called Swoosh Basketball (Las Vegas). Still haven't heard back from them sorta. They called on Friday (using a different phone number) and it was weird. All I heard was my own voice echoing. I called both of their numbers again, nothing. Called them again today and left another message. Still hoping.

Swoosh has tournaments during the weekends of July 5-7 and 12-14 in Vegas and California, but the traffic gridlock (and other issues) in Cali is not something I want to participate in. No way.

Meanwhile, I had a good conversation with a rep from MAYB Basketball, which hosts tournaments all over the country, mostly in the heartland. They host tourneys in Colorado, so that got me interested since we have awesome friends there. The rep, Ricky, recommended the July 5-7 tournament in Colorado Springs since there will be a lot of cool stuff to see and do on 4th of July weekend. Also, the tourney there will be huge.

They have another tourney a week later, July 12-14, in Arvada (West Denver), which is a lot closer to Denver. (Colorado Springs is 45 miles from Denver.) The Arvada tourney is a lot smaller, but I don't mind that. Either tourney is fine with me since Denver in general has more interesting stuff for us to do than Las Vegas.

Ricky also suggested a big, big tourney in Aug. 1-4 (Wichita, Kan.), but by then some of our guys will be busy with football so I don't want to risk that.  He was surprised when I told him we start school here in late July.

It would be insane and possibly incredible if we could go to tournaments in Vegas AND Colorado. But that would be a 10- or 11-day trip. I think the possibility of that is low, but we do have friends (Daniel Vela offered his family's huge basement in their home in Denver). That would be more about time away from home and more cost (food, gas, van rental, etc.), but if it can be done, I'm all for it. McDonald's for breakfast, lunch and dinner haa.

Before all this is concrete, of course, we have to take care of the biggest cost - air fare. I'm going to start working on that. Our parents who have a lot of experience with that, please help me with that process. Which travel agency offers the best group rates? Or is that not the best route?

Why go through all this? I'm not a big fan of traveling. I haven't been out of state since 2001. But we have a special group of kids in 13U. It feels like the 'perfect storm' situation. If we don't travel, we'll be fine, but these kids won't be 12/13 years old for long. That's why I'm willing to go beyond the usual (maybe a loan from the FCU) if necessary to get this trip rolling. We can fundraise before and after a trip.

Any thoughts, comments?

Links:
MAYB.com
SwooshBasketball.org

Update 10:30 pm - Starting to warm up to the notion of a tournament in SoCal. Why? 1) The Las Vegas tourney (Swoosh) people haven't called or e-mailed back and I don't want to pay the entry fee online until I talk to one of them, 2) LA is cheaper to fly to than Denver. Vegas is the cheapest place to fly to; it would cost us $3,400 more to fly to Denver. Owwch!

Ran into an old work friend today. He said his softball team used to fly to Vegas en route to Colorado. They paid only $100 each to fly the Vegas-Denver route. His gf added that sometimes the price drops to $30 or $40. Sounds like a reasonable option should we play in two tournaments.