Last winter, Maysville chiropractor Dr. Mark Day was half-joking when he suggested his farm near Russellville, Ohio as the site of a team retreat for the Loyola University Chicago women's basketball team.
The Ramblers' head coach, Kate Achter, took Day up on the offer. Achter, two other coaches and 15 players including Day's daughter, Allison, a 6-1 sophomore forward, made the trip from the Windy City in two vans last weekend.
"The last time the head coach came on a recruiting trip, and they loved coming to the farm, seeing the animals, just a break from the city, and she forgot her farm shoes at the house, just an old pair of gym shoes she used to wear when she would go out," Day said. "She said she was gonna come back to get 'em sometime. That was Allison's junior year. While she never made it back her senior year as (Allison) wasn't playing (due to an injury), we always kept those shoes around. And we always just joked around saying that she's gotta come around and get her shoes sometime. So, finally at one of the games in February, I told her she just needs to bring her team out for a retreat, and she said she might just do that. You know, half-joking, half serious, both of us were. I mean I knew they liked to come out and see the animals and just get away from the noise of Chicago."
Day said when he touched base with Achter in April, she was still thinking about it, and then by June, "it was all systems go."
Day said Allison, who was named to the Missouri Valley Conference All-Freshman Team last season, didn't know anything about the retreat idea until around May.
"The other 14 players did not know until maybe Indianapolis," Day said. "They just knew they were going camping someplace, they were told to bring $20 with them, bring clothes they could get muddy, dirty, pillow, and that was about it."
One van arrived at the farm at 1 a.m. Saturday, The other van, which Allison was in, arrived an hour later.
"They were up at 6:15 to go on a pasture walk with me to see the baby calves and watch the sun come up," Day said.
Day and his wife, Janie, take care packages to the team when they attend the Ramblers' games. The care packages include Amish donuts, so the team traveled to Seaman Saturday morning to get Amish donuts for breakfast.
The group played Frisbee and hung out at the farm before heading to the Brown County Fair.
"They rode rides, did a scavenger hunt, you know, just to see different items," Day said. "They loved the fair; wasn't sure how the fair would go, but they loved the fair."
Coach Achter had attended the Brown County Fair when she was recruiting Allison.
"She knew it wasn't your typical county fair, so that was part of the timing of the trip, to come out here this weekend," Day said.
Coach Achter ran into a former college teammate at the fair last weekend.
"She had a teammate that she knew lived in the Cincinnati area," Day said. "Her teammate was from Peoria. She played with her at Bowling Green. She was a freshman when the coach was a senior. And her teammate saw it on Snapchat or Instagram that she was gonna be at the fair, but she still didn't believe that it was serious, you know, her past teammate coaching in Chicago really gonna be at the Brown County Fair, seems a little far fetched. But they hadn't been in there five minutes, they ran into each other."
The players cooled off by swimming in the pond before sleeping under the stars on a trailer and hay wagon filled with air mattresses.
"Some of the girls remarked when they got out of the van Friday night/Saturday morning 'but wow! look at all the stars, I've never seen so many stars before'," Day said.
A few of the players were scared by some of the farm sounds.
"In September, the walnuts are falling, so you can imagine all the walnuts falling down in the middle of the night, scaring these girls," Day said. "And then there was coyotes howling and there was some owls scaring 'em as well."
The team headed back to Chicago early Sunday morning.
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