The return of the gophers

The last day of Gopher Italia started this morning by parting ways with several members of our "Big Family" as they were staying on for an extended tour. I trust those members of the crew will enjoy their respective jaunts through Europe. As a side note, we registered our first official celebrity sighting, in the Newark airport of all places. Archie and Eli Manning along with their wives, waited patiently for a plane to Indianapolis two rows away from us, while we were waiting to board our plane to Minneapolis.

This trip has certainly been an adventure in many senses from language to cultural to academic to sporting endeavors. From an academic perspective, this group is enrolled in various sub-disciplines of Kinesiology including: Physical Therapy, Sport Management, Sport Sociology as well as in programs outside the KIN department such as Finance. This amalgamation of viewpoints generated interesting presentations and group discussions that followed. The diverse perspectives were evident during the hockey/basketball globalization wrap up that touched on NHL/NBA expansion into Europe. While many of us agreed that the leagues have a strong fan base in Europe, the group was not necessarily sure that NHL/NBA expansion franchises in Europe are a viable option at the present time. In contrast, the dialogue surrounding Brandon Jennings leap from HS to Euro League basketball contained more divergent opinions on the importance of education, the role of sport as upward mobility and the impact this precedent might set for future student athletes with dreams of professional stardom. This example illustrates some of the formal discussions that took place during the course of our two week trip. We also ended up engaging in many informal conversations on sport, culture and globalization while walking the streets or over dinner.

In terms of sport, the Swiss women's soccer match turned into one of the most intriguing parts of our voyage. As Lindsey's blog indicates, the match was intense and more exciting than anyone could have anticipated. The way in which the majority of our group embraced the game and players was quite awesome. Here we were in the middle of Switzerland, watching a random club match of two teams that we had no connection with, yet people were cheering, jumping up and down and out on the field after the match to congratulate the winning team. The genuine enthusiasm people showed during/following that match was brilliant!

As the trip wore on our Spitalian steadily improved but we were thrown a curveball when we arrived in Switzerland to find that French and German are spoken more frequently than Italian. Fortunately, "pizza" is a universal word. Some of us, maybe just me rediscovered French phrases learned in HS. The ever important phrase, "No parlez-vous francais" came in handy a couple of times when people tried to ask me directions. Overall, this aspect of the trip reinforced the idea that I need to learn a foreign language, beyond some phrases that I miraculously remembered despite being a long time removed from 10th grade french class.

The previous paragraphs are designed to give a glimpse of the major themes we touched upon during the entire semester. Finally, I want recognize Dr. Buysse's efforts and thank her for organizing this class. Our trip flowed quite smoothly. I would like to leave you with lyrics from our trip song Empire of the Sun: Walking on a Dream, "We are always running for the thrill of it thrill of it, Always pushing up the hill searching for the thrill of it, On and on and on we are calling out and out again, Never looking down I’m just in awe of what’s in front of me..."

Emily Houghton
PhD student in Sport Sociology