Letters From Moscow: Pre-Moscow Exhibition

By Laura Harper

Special to CSTV.com

Laura Harper is a senior forward at Maryland and was Most Outstanding Player in the Final Four in 2006 to lead the Terrapins to the national championship. Harper was selected as one of 12 members of the 2007 USA Under-21 National Team who will travel to Moscow, Russia for the FIBA U21 World Championships.

Despite traveling 30 hours on a plane and dealing with a lot of jetlag, we finally got to France and began to play. We began by starting to think about where this tournament was going to go, and what we wanted to do with it, and of course, how we were going to form ourselves as a team.

Starting off in Colorado, that was probably the worst part of our trip. We had four days of two-a-days and that really tested us because the only thing we were doing was waking up, eating, playing and sleeping and playing and eating and sleeping and that was the rotation of our schedule every day. It really tested a lot of people because by the second and third day we were all tired and we'd been going so hard and all everyone ever wanted to do was just make the team and represent the USA.

Once Colorado was over it felt like a big weight was lifted. It felt like the 12 who made the team knew that they were part of the journey and they were part of what was going to be there to make it happen for the U21 team.

Now that we are in France a lot of people didn't know what to expect. Dealing with the people here speaking French, dealing with the change in the hours, the practices, the games, the scrimmages, it was very different. Now that we are leaving tomorrow I can look back and say that all three games we learned something from playing the French team. Each of the games we felt a little bit sloppy and turned the ball over a lot, but we felt like we grew as a team and it showed us what it was going to take to play the international style of basketball that we are going to face in Moscow.

The best part of the trip was that it was a mix of basketball and touring. We got to go to all the most beautiful cities that I have ever seen in my life in France. We got to go to Cannes, where the music festival usually is with all the actors and actresses that come to France. We got to eat at the same restaurant where Beyoncé and Jay-Z ate at. We got to put our feet in the Mediterranean Sea, eat at places straight on the water and just walk around and feel really high class. We played one day in Monaco and that was a sight to see. We traveled great distances and saw all the landmarks, and this is something different that a lot of us aren't used to. Personally, it made me very appreciative for what basketball was allowing us to experience.

Not many people understand or realize what it is like to compete for your country and do what it takes, whether that is playing two minutes or 40 minutes, just to get a gold medal, and that is where our minds are.