The Maryland women’s basketball team will travel to Taiwan next summer to represent the United States in the World University Games.
The World University Games are a biannual deal. It’s a multiple-sport event, specifically for athletes between 17 and 24. They come, as the event’s name suggests, from all over the world. Everyone has to either be a college student or have been one within a year, and it sounds kind of like an Olympics for college kids.
It’s exceedingly rare for entire college teams to get these sorts of trips. The only women’s basketball team to ever do it before was UNC Charlotte in 2007. Before that, the Big 12 sent a conference team in 2003.
Here’s a video Maryland did on this:
Honored to represent the USA at the World University Games in Taipei next summer! https://t.co/VdLp7GqXTi https://t.co/QmlMebsDkH
— Maryland WBB (@umdwbb) September 8, 2016
Maryland went to Italy this past summer. International trips are terrific team-building opportunities and also lots of fun, so good for Maryland for getting one here – and getting a chance to play in a tournament teams don’t often get to join.
Elsewhere
Uh, Maryland’s got a football game tonight. Here’s a preview.
Jesse Aniebonam and Melvin Keihn: pretty good.
Denzel Conyers is back and at ‘em after a scary injury.
Florida is super, super important to what Maryland’s doing these days.
We’ve also got some important staffing news.
It’s been my honor to run Testudo Times for the last year (or the last 11 months and change, if I’m being honest). In that regard, my run’s come to an end. I’ll no longer be a co-managing editor here or running our day-to-day operations.
Ryan Connors, who’s done brilliantly as my co-manager for the last few months since Dave Tucker moved on, will be the sole managing editor. Thomas Kendziora and Matt Ellentuck are the assistant managing editors, and otherwise, we’re just a big team. We’ve always been pretty collaborative about our workflow here. We expect to add a few new writers soon, and I’ll stick around doing a few things: writing columns when Ryan lets me and developing those as-yet-to-meet-you new folks. I’ll be, um, a contributing editor? I just want to stay involved, honestly.
This is sad news for me, but it comes from something good. This isn’t any big secret, but I’ve just started up in a full-time capacity covering college football for our parent, SB Nation. Getting to work there is a dream, just like getting to work here’s been a dream. One’s full-time employment, however, and one isn’t. Time constraints are time constraints, and I can’t do both jobs at once without short-changing the rest of our staff and the people who consume our work.
Ryan’s going to keep pushing this place forward, and his eventual successor will do the same thing. And on it will go, because that’s how we do things. We’ll always have turnover, and we’ll always have young people writing, but the mission never changes: to be informative, to be fun and to be a community. Thanks for being a part of all of it, and thanks for keeping me honest. Let’s keep it going.