My First Year Overseas

By Travis W Reed Guest Writer travisreed375@yahoo.com

been that far from my friends or family before but I wanted to play basketball professionally and this was my ticket to do so. I was excited but also very scared of this situation. Imagine going to a place where you don't know the language, anyone or anything but you are expected to perform and be the best player and not lose. If your team loses too much the team will send you home no matter how well you are playing.

Columbia to Warsaw, Poland to France to Belgium and Holland. All in my first year and my first experience of playing basketball professionally. I had never

The contracts you think are guaranteed aren't and sometimes they won't pay you at all. Also mostly all overseas contracts are just one year long. So you can only imagine the pressure that an american player goes through every game let alone the season. So going into my first season not knowing what to expect it was scary. When I went to Bogata , Columbia I didn't speak the language and they didn't have police there so people who were in the military were the cops and I had two assigned to me at all times if I left the hotel I stayed in because of Americans getting kidnapped.

I had a great time playing but it was lots of crazy things out there . The gym was in this concrete building with no windows and the court was surrounded by a cage. The people would light flairs in the gym so it was a beyond crazy experience. I still enjoyed myself even though if I went to walk around anywhere in the city I had those armed guys with me. Before the game would start the coach would talk for 15 minutes in spanish and I would ask my teammate who spoke english , "what did the coach say" and he would say the coach said give you the ball when you were open . I laughed because he talked about 15 minutes so I know it was more said than that. As the season went along my team was a good team and there are so many stories that I can write about when I played ball there, like the fact that they always were late with paying us for no reason at all, but that's another story for another time. I played in Columbia for a couple months because it was my summer job and to see if I liked it overseas. Now I came home from Columbia and I signed a contract to go and play in Warsaw , Poland or so I thought. I thought it was a contract for that year and come to find out it was a try out for me and the other American player.

The team released me because I wasn't the height they wanted. So, I wasn't the height they wanted, it had nothing to do with my game, not at all. Also I was there for a month without pay so I didn't receive any money at all. I didn't have a car so I had to walk 3 miles to practice everyday . It was an interesting experience to say the least.

Get ready for this, I get a ticket home and while I'm on the flight home I get an emergency call on the plane from my agent saying to get off the plane because he has another job for me in Paris , France. I will tell you about that story in the next article. If you ever want to listen to more about my Journey or the journey of many other athletes check out my podcast An Athletes Journey available on Spotify , Apple podcast , Amazon Music and other podcast platforms. You also can follow me on social media @traviswreed on Instagram and Travis W Reed on Facebook and Travis W Reed on LinkedIn. I also post several times a week on my social media platforms about my incredible basketball journey and many others and I also have a LinkTree as well. You can always contact me through any of those platforms. Thanks for taking the time out to read my article and I will tell you more about my first year overseas in the next issue of Envision Magazine.