During a trip to Italy and Croatia this summer, Penn women’s basketball players got a pregame warmup unlike any they’d ever experienced: riding jet skis on the water.
“I told Coach we need jet skis in our Schuylkill [River in Philadelphia] so we can do that as our pregame,” senior guard Stina Almqvist told The Next.
The jet skis were just one indication that this wasn’t a normal road trip for Penn — in fact, it was the program’s first foreign tour since 2018 and a once-in-a-lifetime experience for many players. Several had never traveled outside the United States before the Quakers departed on Aug. 9. And junior forward Helena Lasic, who grew up in Canada in a Croatian family, had never visited Croatia.
Head coach Mike McLaughlin and his staff chose the destinations about nine months before the trip, McLaughlin told The Next. Italy was the known quantity, as the Quakers had traveled there in 2014, and McLaughlin wanted to give this year’s team a taste of that culture and history. He’d never been to Croatia, but he’d heard plenty of positive reviews.
Though he initially wondered whether having a flight mid-trip was a good idea, “it ended up being a perfect match of two places,” he said. “They got the experience [of] the beach, the coastal area, the sea … and then they got more of a city feel.”
Related reading: Which women’s college basketball teams are taking foreign tours in 2024?
The travel planning, led by the tour company Basketball Travelers and Penn director of operations Christine Woods, took on added complexity because of the possibility that the Ivy League would change its rules this summer to allow first-year players to travel on foreign tours. They planned for both scenarios, including making sure the first-years had passports and were prepared to come to Penn early for pre-trip practices if they were allowed to travel.
The Ivy League Council of Presidents ultimately approved the rule change, and Penn was the first team to travel after it took effect on Aug. 1. (The NCAA already allowed first-years to travel, so the change brought the Ivy League in line with other conferences.) Previously, all Ivy players had to be enrolled in classes before they could go on foreign tours, and because many Ivy colleges don’t have summer sessions, first-years generally couldn’t meet that requirement.
“I don’t know if I can match this for them now going forward,” McLaughlin said about his first-years. “That’s the only problem.”
At practices before the team departed, McLaughlin and his staff focused on conditioning and implementing a few plays. They also divided the team into four groups and, after dinner one night, each group presented on one of the cities on the itinerary: Naples, Rome, Split and Dubrovnik.
“Some of them had video. Some had PowerPoints,” McLaughlin said. “… They role-played. They interviewed themselves. They did skits.”
Almqvist and some of her teammates even adapted a TikTok trend to fit the moment. They taught everyone else a Croatian phrase and had each person say it one at a time. They applauded everyone in turn — except for McLaughlin, causing confusion (from him) and laughter (from them).
“He’s forgiven me now, so that’s good,” Almqvist said.
Once the Quakers arrived in Europe, the itinerary was packed with sightseeing and cultural experiences. They saw the Sistine Chapel, the Vatican, the Colosseum and City Wall Rooftop Court in Dubrovnik. They also took a 40-minute boat ride along the Amalfi Coast.
“I felt like I was on a postcard,” McLaughlin said of the boat ride.
In addition to the famous landmarks, the Quakers saw some famous people, too. At the gym after a game in Croatia, they met former Oakland player Jack Gohlke, who hit 10 3-pointers in an upset of Kentucky in the 2024 NCAA Tournament and is now playing overseas. And tennis star Novak Djokovic was on their flight back to the United States on Aug. 20, just before the U.S. Open. A few players even got a photo with him before takeoff.
“I tried,” Almqvist said. “The flight attendant turned me away. … I’m from a little tennis town, so [seeing him] was massive. That was crazy.”
For Almqvist, a native of Sweden, the trip felt familiar in some ways, even though it was her first time in Italy and Croatia. “Finally we go on a trip where they use kilometers, celsius, and military time,” she wrote on Instagram after the trip, adding the prayer emoji.
Her teammates and coaches looked to her during the trip to explain cultural differences between Europe and the U.S. She said she didn’t have to say much off the court, but on the court, there were more differences to navigate.
“I walked out on the floor because I thought it was a timeout,” McLaughlin said. “It was really an ‘X,’ which is a sub. … So I’m like, ‘Stina, what’s up?’”
“He was trying to take a timeout in the middle of the game,” Almqvist said. “I was like, ‘See, it doesn’t work like that here. You gotta wait until the ball goes out of bounds or something.’ He [was] really struggling.”
As McLaughlin got the hang of international timeout rules, his players got valuable preseason experience in three games overseas. The Quakers won those games by an average of 38.3 points and topped 100 points twice. But more significantly, McLaughlin rotated everyone in and experimented with things he thought might help the team early in the season. The Quakers have a young roster with 10 underclassmen, and McLaughlin got his first look at the freshmen and a preview of how ready his sophomores are for bigger roles.
After graduating standout forwards Jordan Obi and Floor Toonders, Penn will likely lean more on Almqvist and sophomore guards Mataya Gayle, Ese Ogbevire and Abby Sharpe. Someone else could break out, too, like Gayle and Almqvist did last season. Gayle was the Ivy League Rookie of the Year after averaging 14.3 points per game. And the 6’1 Almqvist averaged 15.3 points and 6.4 rebounds per game, up from 3.7 points and 2.2 rebounds per game over her first two seasons.
“[Stina is] just very, very consistent, which was really good for these [younger] kids to see,” McLaughlin said. “… We’re going to rely on some of these freshmen to play right away and perhaps play very big roles out of the gate. We’ll see how that goes in preseason. But that would be my expectation, that a couple of them are ready to play.”
“I think we’re just gonna find new ways [to succeed],” Almqvist said. “Definitely our posts gotta step up and work really hard to try to fill that spot. But … I think there’s a lot of talent. And … I think we’re gonna be way quicker this year — our guards are really quick.”
The Quakers also got an early chance to test their mental toughness against the European heat. Temperatures hit the upper 90s during their trip, and the gyms weren’t air conditioned. For one game in Rome, McLaughlin took the team outside rather than talking in the locker room because the outdoor temperature was more bearable.
The foreign tour came at the right time to help a young team come together. Almqvist noted that, at the same point in her freshman year as this season’s foreign tour, she barely knew all her teammates’ names. But this year’s group already had five practices and a 12-day trip to get to know each other, and they’ve brought at least one tradition from the trip — intense games of Mafia — back to Philadelphia.
“We spent so much time together that I feel like it’s easy to get tired of everyone,” Gayle said in a video posted on social media just after the trip. “But for me, that was one of the most fun parts, just us all being together and bonding.”
On the court, too, the hope is that the trip will give Penn a leg up as it prepares for a competitive schedule, including in the Big 5 and the Ivy League.
“I think it’s a good way to get a little taste [of] how Coach wants it right now, and now it’s the time to work on things that we know we need to work on,” Almqvist said. “So I think it’s great. … It couldn’t have come at a better time.”
And McLaughlin believes that the impact of the trip will resonate even beyond this season, based in part on conversations he’s had with alumnae. For many of them, foreign tours are highlights of their Penn careers, not far behind winning Ivy League championships.
“I think the takeaway is going to be many years to come,” McLaughlin said. “It’s going to be for the now, but it’s also going to be as their legacies are going to be determined. … They will have one shared thing.”
