Sinclair enjoys 'great experience' in China

It quickly became obvious to Aulani Sinclair that she wasn’t in Southern Indiana anymore.

One of the biggest differences, besides the population, between the former IU forward’s hometown of Eminence, Ind., and cities in China?

The driving.

“I don’t know how to explain it,” she said. “We have rules in America, and even in Cloverdale on the roads (there are rules). There, I don’t think there’s any rules. People can cut people off, swerve into different lanes, do U-turns wherever they want, pedestrians walk in the road wherever they want.”

Sinclair got back to the United States July 1 after an 11-game trip to four different cities in China as part of the NetScouts Team USA Women’s All-Stars. She was named Tournament MVP of the nine-game Four Nations Tournament.

It was a trip she never expected to make, and a trip that took her over 6,500 miles away from the small-town of Eminence, Ind., where she learned to play basketball on her gravel driveway.

“When I was younger,” Sinclair said, “if someone would’ve told me, ‘If you work hard and stay with basketball and give it everything,’ if they would’ve told me I’d end up at IU, my dream school, and then even having the opportunity to go to China and do all these other things, I would’ve never really believed it.”

Upon her return to Eminence, Ind., she’s already started imparting her worldly knowledge on the kids in the small town an hour north of Bloomington.

“Now I think it’s cool, because there are kids from Eminence who are my friends’ little brothers and sisters who are like, ‘Oh, Aulani did this so I can do it too.’ I talk to them and I’m like, ‘If I can do it, then there’s no reason you guys can’t.’”

Sinclair thought she would only see the Great Wall of China from the inside pages of her history books at Eminence High School and IU. Now, she’s walked across it.

“Saw that, walked on it, took a lot of pictures,” Sinclair said of the Great Wall. “It was great just to see everything. You hear about it and read about it in your history classes and stuff, but actually going there and being able to touch it and walk on it, it felt surreal. It was really cool.”

While in China, she also visited the Forbidden City and Beijing, where the team saw the Bird’s Nest and all the Olympic venues from the 2008 summer games.

“The whole experience was great,” she said. “Just seeing the whole new different culture was really interesting and a great experience. And then just meeting all the other girls from all over that I was playing with and against. Meeting them on a personal level and getting to know them, getting advice from them. A couple of the girls on our team were vets and they’ve played overseas for a couple of years. They just kind of gave us the ins and outs of overseas life and what to expect. It was just a great experience all around.”

In the nine-game Four Nations Tournament, Team USA went 9-0. Sinclair averaged 11 points to garner the All-Tournament MVP honors. She was also named the MVP of the three tournament games in Pingxiang and was named to the All-Tournament team after the three games in Chengdu.

She scored a high of 22 points, connecting on 6-of-12 3-pointers, against Hungary in the team’s second game.

She said she started some games, but the coach rotated a different starting five in for every game. She said everyone played about the same amount of minutes.

Coming into the tournament, the coach had told her that she would be the 3-point shooter on the team. But as the teams from Hungary, Australia and China saw her play, they began to defend that shot.

“I had to create my shot in other ways,” Sinclair said, “coming off curls and getting to the basket or getting fouled. I did shoot a lot of 3s, but I scored in other ways as well.”

As a shooter, she had to adjust to a 3-point line that was further away from the basket, a Chinese ball, which she said had different grooves, and some different views on refereeing.

“The refereeing over there was completely different than what we’re used to over here,” she said. “A lot of travels were not called. A lot of fouls were not called. It was just very, very different I guess you could say.”

But she appreciated having the opportunity to experience all these differences, as she plans to continue to play professional basketball overseas. She has hired an agent who is looking to find the best fit and best team for her somewhere overseas. She hopes to sign with a team within the next couple of weeks.

If she ends up in China, she might have to get accustomed to the food. She said the team once escaped to a Pizza Hut they found nearby for dinner because everyone wanted food that reminded them of home. Once inside, she said it took the team nearly 15 minutes to try to get past the language barrier and communicate what kind of pizza they wanted.

“The food was very different,” she said. “The noodles were pretty safe to eat. A lot of the stuff had different flavorings than we were used to. The meat, we would call it the mystery meat, because we never really knew what we were eating. But it was fun. Everyday at dinner we didn’t really know what to expect. But we all found food that we liked. We got the whole experience while we were there.”

It was an experience Sinclair said she would never trade.
And one she never expected to have.

“Just growing up, I never even thought that would be an option for me to be honest with you,” Sinclair said. “Playing college ball, that was my thing, and if it was at IU, that was great when I was younger.

“Now that I’ve accomplished that goal, you just have to expand them further and further so you can keep striving to meet new goals.”