Former Lebanon High and Lebanon Valley College basketball player Anthony Trautman signed a contract last week with a German team and will play his first game there soon.
Trautman’s team is located in the Bavarian city of Zwickau, about an hour from Leipzig and two hours from Prague.
Zwickau will play in a tournament the last weekend in September and then play its first regular-season game Oct. 4.
The former Cedar left Lebanon on July 30 to fly to a tryout camp in Spain, where a coach from Zwickau saw him and offered him a deal. Prior to leaving for Germany, Trautman spent some time in Barcelona, site of the recently concluded FIBA world championships, and caught a glimpse of some Team USA players, including Kyrie Irving and James Harden, rolling through the beach area on Segways.
If you can read German, you can follow Zwickau’s progress at http://www.bc-zwickau.de. The website hasn’t been updated for awhile but should be soon. The team’s schedule continues into March.
Meanwhile back in the USA, NBA camps will be opening soon, with the first regular-season games in late October. College basketball practices begin about Oct. 15, with the first games in mid November. Trautman’s alma mater will open its season in York College’s tip-off tournament Nov. 15-16. The Flying Dutchmen’s first game will be against defending Centennial Conference playoff champ Johns Hopkins; York plays Keuka (from New York’s Finger Lakes region) in the other game. Freshman Blayde Reich from Lebanon is at York.
Follow along on Twitter @sesnyderleb.