Road trip: Girls like their time in the sun

Mundelein's girls basketball team soaks up the atmosphere poolside in Arizona.

Editor's note: Mundelein's boys and girls basketball teams are spending this week in Arizona, taking advantage of the IHSA's relatively new rule that allows teams to travel anywhere for games. The Mustangs will play two Arizona schools, Boulder Creek and Desert Mountain, that are located in the greater Phoenix area. The teams are enjoying some off-the-court activities as well. Navjot Singh, a senior forward on the boys team, and Samantha Panitch, a senior point guard on the girls team, are writing diaries throughout the trip. Here are their two most recent entries.

From Samantha Panitch:

Our second day of practice was held at Boulder Creek High School on Wednesday at 11 in the morning. The drive to practice was filled with singing songs, like 99 bottles of coke on the wall, and the bazooka bubble gum song.

We arrived at practice and worked on our man-to-man defense and our offense against a zone defense. After practice we went over to Coach Knar's parents and Toni's grandparents' house for lunch. They live in Arizona and their home was only a short distance away from both where we were practicing and our hotel. They graciously made us sloppy joes and pulled pork sandwiches, along with potato salad, chips, and gatorade for lunch.

It was a beautiful day out, sunny, and over 70 degrees so we were all looking forward to swimming in grandma and grandpa Knar's pool. The water was freezing, though. Toni and Jess Bjerning still decided to jump in the water and Toni described the experience as, "needles shooting through my body."

The rest of us just laid out on the porch and tanned, and some girls played the game apples to apples. Our favorite person at the Knar household was Toni's 4-year-old cousin Charlie. He was very entertaining as he yelled at Toni for breaking a screen door and then hid from us and said he could not speak to us when we tried to talk to him.

We actually got some pretty good color for only laying out for about and hour and should be heading back to Mundelein with a very nice tan.

We stayed at the Knars for a few hours, and then we headed back to our hotel. On the way back, we stopped at an ice cream place called The Sugar Bowl, or as coach Evans like to call it, "Sugar Daddies." While we were taking a picture outside of the restaurant a car pulled up beside us and it was our principal, Dr. Alghram, our athletic director, Mr. Wilhelm and their wives! They are coming to watch our games this week and had just arrived in Arizona and were driving through town when we saw them.

We went inside and Kelso and I played the basketball shooting game, and Kelso kicked my butt. Then we enjoyed our ice cream and went back to our hotel to get ready for dinner. We went to Fridays for dinner, or as T would say, TGI Fridays. The rest of the night we spent relaxing in our rooms getting ready for our game tomorrow.

(And this entry from Jan. 1)

Today was a relaxing day in Arizona.

We did not have a wakeup call so we were able to sleep in as long as we wanted. As soon as everyone woke up and had breakfast, we quickly changed into our swimsuits and headed down to the pool.

The beautiful palm trees were an obstacle to the objective of the day: to get tan. That didn't stop us from soaking up the rays, though. The sun finally went over the palm trees, and we enjoyed our day of fun in the sun.

Also, coach Evans decided to jump into the hot tub with all of his clothes on, which was very amusing because the jets made his shirt puff out and he looked like a sumo wrestler.

After spending a couple of hours at the pool we headed up to our rooms to shower and get ready for dinner.

Before dinner, though, we decided to try and drive up one of the mountains. On the way up we stopped to take a lot of pictures by cacti, the mountains, and mustang statues. We were so close to getting all the way to the top of the mountain, but couldn't go any further because we could not get through the gated communities.

We were all thankful coach Harding did not get us lost on the way back down the mountain and we headed over to Olive Garden for dinner. Coach Evans treated us all to dinner so that made it taste even better! After that we went out to enjoy some ice cream.

The singing during all of the car rides definitely makes them some of the most fun times we have had on our trip so far. These car rides are also good for bringing our team closer together. One of the main ideas for us coming to Arizona was to help our team become closer. All of us have been getting along great and I think the time we are spending together during our six days here will help us a ton during the second half of our season.

Tomorrow looks to be a much busier day, starting off with practice early in the morning.

From Navjot Singh

Hey everybody:

In my personal opinion today was the best day so far. We woke up early as usual and got breakfast. Then we headed to Ashley Negron's room to get our sweats and practice gear marked for washing. That's when we realized that Matt Pioch had forgotten his sweats, which we'd been instructed to bring.

He felt like a fool, but we all pointed and made fun.

Practice was sooo hard. I don't know whether it was the temp change, atmosphere change, or jetlag but we came out "soft" and lazy. Coach Knar quickly got us on the line, running suicides until we got our minds right. After coach Knar and coach Knigge's intense speeches, we played great, the way Mundelein basketball is supposed to be played.

Then we headed over to Knigge's grandma's crib. It might have been the coolest house I've ever been to. It was definitely MTV crib-worthy. It had a pool in the back, and a great view, and the food that the Knigge family prepared was scrumptious as well. After playing pool we hung out and watched the movie "Shooter" on a projection screen TV.

Then it was time for dinner, and we had Italian galore-plus. We had pasta, mostaccioli, brats, brownies, lemon squares, cookies and shrimp. After dinner we watched the Fiesta bowl.

A funnier moment in the day was when I walked into a clear glass window -- it was so clean I thought it was an open door.

After the Knigges' house we headed over to the Seneca overlook. It was chilly out, but it was well worth it. The view was gorgeous and it was a good bonding experience.

Anyway, as it got dark we headed back to the hotel where it was emphasized that we should get some sleep because Game Day is finally here. It is time to do what we do best, and that is actually the reason that we are out here.

Throughout this trip I have already learned that individuals alone do not make a team. And that if an individual has his own agenda a team just doesn't work. A team is a group of people that are working toward a similar goal. And especially for this team, every player contributes to our team's successes and failures, whether or not it makes it to the stat sheets or newspapers.

(And this entry from Jan. 1)

Hey everybody:

The weather today was gorgeous, about 65 and sunny. Lucky for us we had our relaxing day. We awoke whenever we felt like it, worry-free. Some of us decided to get up early to catch the continental breakfast. We learned interesting things -- such as Mike Gerton is allergic to bananas.

After eating, most of us went back to bed because it was 8 a.m.

We woke up later and decided to go hang out by the hotel pool. It wasn't the greatest pool, but the warm weather made it seem so -- especially in light of the snow that fell in Mundelein before we left. We spent a majority of the afternoon throwing balls around the pool, playing a little pool football, hot-tubbing (personal fav), and working on our tans.

Mr. Ackley was kind enough to buy us lunch. As we awaited our subs, we sat in the hotel rooms and watched bowl games all day.

Although they weren't as fun as actually being there like the day before, we still had fun placing dumb bets and just horsing around like kids do. One of the funnier things that happened today was that PJ Bregenzer had been stealing people's shoes and putting them in fridges.

Jeff Camplin and Matt Pioch were freaking out for most of the day until their shoes were found; we all had a good laugh.

After laying around some more and getting some treatment for my gimpy ankle, we were lucky enough to go to Outback, courtesy of the Brusts!!! It was one of the most delicious meals I've ever eaten.

We are planning on seeing another movie after dinner tonight, and I can't wait to sleep in and take care of business in practice tomorrow. Although relaxing is always fun, we all know that we came here for one reason and one reason only, and that is to win two basketball games.