A perfect weekend

Past weekend was spent in Oberwart where Saturday night the Oberwart Gunners were fighting to prolongue their season by 5 more days and to keep the chance for the first championship alive. In Game 4 of the Finals series in which they were trailing the reigning champions – the Gmunden Swans – the team not only was with its back to the wall but also without one of their key players who injured himself in the loss of game three on Wednesday night. After having beaten Gmunden in the first 5 games this season – Oberwart won all 4 games in the regular season as well as it dominated Game 1 of the Finals – the past two games were unfortunately lost by a narrow margin and so it was quite obvious that the Sporthalle Oberwart was packed with supporters pushing the team to tie the series. A relatively nervous start into the game in Q1 which ended 12-18 for Gmunden was followed by an outburst of probably the most enthusiastic player in the Gunners team and the whole league – Hannes Artner. Within 4 minutes he scored 4 three pointers, turned around the game and injected massive self-confidence into the whole team. Great work on the defensive end, nervousness on Gmunden’d side as well as a few additional three pointers Kelvin Parker for the Gunners resulted in the probably game decisive score 28-7 for Q2.

Whoever has thought that the game was over was proven wrong as Gmunden did work itself back into the game and quite clearly was keen to take home the championship and won Q3 16-22. Also in the beginning of Q4 Gmunden was able to make the game even closer and when Enis Murati dunked the ball on a fastbreak to cut Oberwart’s lead to 65-56 the momentum seemed very much on the Swan’s side again. The following timeout taken by the Gunners however did its trick and the Gunners managed to take control over the game again both on the front as offensive as well as defensive end keeping the lead in the area of 10points and controlled it until the end. When the final time ran out after 40 minutes and the score was 78-67 the whole arena was reliefed and enthusiastic. The fans were chanting “Gmunden wir kommen” and one can rest assured that the traffic between Oberwart and Gmunden will be quite dense this coming Thursday when the decisive Game 5 of this series will tip off at 1930. Fingers crossed, the Gunners can seal the first championship, which would be well deserved for the team, the management and the fans.

Sunday afternoon was very relaxed - as one can see

Sunday morning we spent some time in Markus’ parents backyard playing with Jakob before visiting Michi, Klaus and Nikolaus for barbecue. We were a little bit uneasy as Jakob did not take his lunchtime nap and were worried that our junior would be “difficult” but we obviously underestimated the effect a playing 4.5 year old playing partner and a large backyard would have. Jakob was super happy running around, jumping on the trampoline, climbing up the climbing scaffold, going up- and downhill on the Bobby Car and one could not tell that he has not had a nap. Given the weather was so nice and both our juniors were so happy we stayed until late afternoon and had a second round of delicious BBQ for dinner before putting Jakob into the bathtub and making him bed-ready and, as expected, shortly after we set off towards Vienna Jakob fell asleep – the perfect end to a perfect weekend.

Jakob, Kerstin & Markus