Nancy Liu has often woken up during the past six months not knowing where she was. All she knew was she was somewhere in Europe — and that’s exactly how she wanted it.
Liu is an uncommonly dedicated sports fan, even by basketball junkie standards. She quit her job and visited 33 European cities in 63 days from March to May to watch professional basketball games in person.
“I love the swishing sound of a basketball going through the net. And I’m uncomfortable if I don’t play basketball for two or three days,” said Liu, who started playing basketball in the fifth grade when she attended an international school in Beijing.
Already familiar with the American basketball scene, including the professional NBA and the college game, Liu said her passion for the sport took her to the other side of the Atlantic Ocean to explore an area she was less familiar.
Liu quit her job at an international trading company and started to map out her plan to visit as many European teams and leagues as possible.
Helped by the many friends she made while volunteering at various local sporting events, including the Jones Cup basketball tournament, the Kaohsiung World Games and the Taipei Deaflympics, Liu arranged about 70 percent of her itinerary before departing on what she called “A Basketball Dream — Ballin’ Europe.”
The basketball-loving girl, who majored in applied chemistry at Taiwan’s National Chiao Tung University, began her basketball pilgrimage by attending a Swiss professional league game in Geneva less than 24 hours after arriving there.
In the following two months, the journey took Liu to numerous cities in eight countries — Switzerland, Italy, Slovenia, France, Spain, Germany, the Netherlands and Greece.
In all, Liu attended 25 games and watched 50 teams play in various European domestic leagues, as well as the Eurocup Finals and the Euroleague Final Four — both top-tier European basketball competitions.
Liu estimated that, on average, she slept less than three hours a night during her stay in Europe and visited as many as three cities in a day.
After the two-month trip, she spent three months in Beijing working as an intern at NBA China and returned to Taiwan for one day before resuming her travels.
This time she visited Turkey for the 2010 FIBA Men’s World Championship and attended all of the tournament’s games, while getting to see her favorite player — Rudy Fernandez of Spain — play in person.
To save money during her European travels, Liu said she spent all but one night staying at friends’ places and ended up spending only around NT$200,000 on the trip.
“Most of my budget was spent on transportation — flight tickets, train tickets and bus fares,” Liu said.
She also had to overcome “the unthinkable” in Europe, such as a French railway strike and the disruption of European air traffic by the eruption of a volcano in Iceland that left European skies filled with an impenetrable ash.
Newspapers in Serbia and Greece gave extensive coverage to her ambitious trip, Liu said. She was also interviewed by FIBA during the World Championship.
Liu recalled that her parents expressed concern about the trip when she first brought up the idea, but her father finally gave the go-ahead because “he didn’t want me to miss the opportunity to realize my dream.”
Her European trek has not brought her dream to an end. If anything, it was only the beginning of loftier ambitions, including a return to Europe for next year’s European Championship, which will be held in Lithuania next summer.
Liu’s dream now extends beyond watching basketball games.
“I want to be involved in and initiate basketball-related non-government organization projects which inspire children and the underprivileged through the sport,” said Liu, who described herself as being broke and is looking for a job to support her future plans.
“Basketball has been the inspiration to lift myself out of bed every morning since I was 13. I hope that the sport — and my journey — would be an inspiration for other people as well,” she said.
A sumo star was born in Japan on Sunday when 24-year-old Takerufuji became the first wrestler in 110 years to win a top-division tournament on his debut, triumphing at the 15-day Spring Grand Sumo Tournament in Osaka despite injuring his ankle on the penultimate day. Takerufuji, whose injury had left him in a wheelchair outside the ring, shoved out the higher-ranked Gonoyama at the Edion Arena Osaka to the delight of the crowd, giving him an unassailable record of 13 wins and two losses to claim the Emperor’s Cup. “I did it just through willpower. I didn’t really know what was going
The US’ Ilia Malinin on Saturday produced six scintillating quadruple jumps, including a quadruple Axel, in the men’s free skate to capture his first figure skating world title. The 19-year-old nicknamed the “Quad god,” who is the only skater to land a quadruple Axel in competition, dazzled with an array of breathtakingly executed jumps starting with his quad Axel and including a quadruple Lutz in combination with a triple flip and a quadruple toe loop in combination with a triple toe. He added an unexpected triple-triple combination at the end to earn a world-record 227.79 in the free program for a championship
Shohei Ohtani’s interpreter is being criminally investigated by the IRS, and the attorney for his alleged bookmaker said Thursday that the ex-Los Angeles Dodgers employee placed bets on international soccer — but not baseball. The IRS confirmed Thursday that interpreter Ippei Mizuhara and Mathew Bowyer, the alleged illegal bookmaker, are under criminal investigation through the agency’s Los Angeles Field Office. IRS Criminal Investigation spokesperson Scott Villiard said he could not provide additional details. Mizuhara, 39, was fired by the Dodgers on Wednesday following reports from the Los Angeles Times and ESPN about his alleged ties to an illegal bookmaker and debts well
MLB on Friday announced a formal investigation into the scandal swirling around Shohei Ohtani and his former interpreter amid charges that the Los Angeles Dodgers superstar was the victim of “massive theft.” The Dodgers on Wednesday fired Ippei Mizuhara, Ohtani’s long-time interpreter and close friend, after Ohtani’s representatives alleged that the Japanese two-way star had been the victim of theft, which was reported to involve millions of dollars and link Mizuhara to a suspected illegal bookmaker in California. “Major League Baseball has been gathering information since we learned about the allegations involving Shohei Ohtani and Ippei Mizuhara from the news media,” MLB