by Jesus Biag, co-Editor-in-Chief

The defending CIF Basketball Division One State Champions toured the cities of Chengdu, Hanzhong, Beijing, Hangzhou and Shanghai from Thursday, August 8th to Sunday, August 25th, in a trip organized and sponsored by Lartin Brothers Education. 

This trip wasn’t just a free vacation for the varsity team. In the first two cities that they visited, Chengdu and Hanzhong, they competed in six basketball games against the developmental teams of Chinese professional teams, such as the Shanghai Sharks. 

Head Coach Matt Dunn was incredibly impressed by his team’s performance, with the Braves going 6-0 off of some fairly easy victories. 

“I thought for [this] time of year, our group was really good together,” said Coach Dunn. “[The team] returned a lot of guys, and I think that all of those returners played extremely well.”

He especially had a great time watching junior big-man, Howie Wu, who was back in his native country.

Howie, however, wasn’t the only Chinese native that went on the trip. In addition, junior wings Eric Wang and William Wang also returned home. 

Eric, notably, was incredibly proud to be back.

“It was nice to be back home and show my teammates China,” said Eric. 

After their games concluded, Bosco Basketball hosted several basketball clinics in the other cities and some of the players got to compete in a three-on-three and one-on-one game, all to great amounts of fanfare from their Chinese supporters.

“We were treated like celebrities,” Coach Dunn said. “We needed security to get in and out of gyms and on and off the bus. All of the guys took a lot of pictures and signed a lot of autographs, so it was pretty special.”

The player fans were most starstruck by was Bosco’s junior guard, Brandon McCoy, who is currently ranked as the number one recruit in the class of 2026 by On3.

He was the Bosco Brave selected to play in the one-on-one game when they were in Hangzhou.

“It [was] intense playing in that environment because [there were] a lot of people and [the game was played] on a smaller court,” said Brandon. “It was also very hot in the gym, but it just made the game more fun.”

Another one of the players that the people flocked to the most was senior Chris Komin, which allowed the usually reserved guard to step out of his shell.

While they were in China, he was encouraged to post onto Douyin, China’s version of TikTok. After sharing a couple of videos of him playing in the three-on-three game, he amassed over 30,000 followers.

In addition to gaining widespread popularity on Douyin, Chris also felt extremely grateful to be in China. He hails from Chinese heritage on his mom’s side, who accompanied him on the trip.

“It was great to see the culture that’s out there,” Chris said. “My mom got to experience it too, and that felt good.”

Accompanying the team on the administrative side were Vice Principal of Student Affairs, Ms. Jen Schnorr, and Director of Marketing and Communications, Ms. Megan Nash.

Ms. Schnorr’s favorite parts of the trip had nothing to do with the basketball being played. Instead, she loved seeing all of the different sights and exhibits, such as the Giant Panda National Park in Chengdu, the Great Wall of China and Temple of Heaven in Beijing.

Another one of her favorite things that she witnessed on the trip was the camaraderie that was shared between the team, specifically between the international students and their American-born teammates.

“It’s cool to see how close the team actually is,” Ms. Schnorr said. “They’re all very connected and have a great team bond. Traveling together, we were on [so many] trains and buses, and [I observed] that they all get along so well.”

The group’s closeness and chemistry will go a long way as the team takes a few more trips, notably to Las Vegas in October, Chicago during Thanksgiving as well as Arizona and Massachusetts in January.

Coach Dunn believes that this initial tour of China will make things easier as they travel to those places in the coming months.

“I’m a big believer that all of your experiences make it easier to do the next one. So I believe that traveling internationally will make traveling inside the states that much easier,” Coach Dunn said.

With this particular experience in the rearview mirror, Coach Dunn and Bosco Basketball have turned their sights to their end goal—competing for a Southern Section and State Open Division Championship.

“I think we have the kind of team to do it. It’s going to take a lot of hard work and [defeating] a lot of good teams, but I think we have the chance to compete on the state and national level, and [we] look forward to that opportunity.”