Scotland and Ireland Trip The Global Ambassadors trip started out with me knowing no one and finding out who was on my team by looking around the airport for people in the blue stars and stripes sweatshirt and concluded with me having made many close friends. The first day was a long day of travel from Cleveland to Philly to Dublin with the highlight of it being when I met my Stars and Stripes teammates along with Coach Gallagher, Gerber, and Story. By the time we arrived in Dublin it was already the second day and at the airport was where we all met our final teammate. We got on the bus and met our Irish tour guide Alby and our bus driver Frank who would both stay with us through the duration of the trip. Alby’s vast knowledge of the history of Ireland and Scotland was amazing, and he was able to go on 30 minute speeches about almost anything we passed. He was so interesting that he was able to keep me awake on that second day after receiving maybe a half hour of sleep on the plane ride to Dublin. We visited the Anglican Cathedral of St. Patrick’s and visited Trinity College and learned about the history of Dublin. After that we were able to go to the University College of Dublin (UCD) where we were finally able to practice football.

The third day, Monday, was a bit different because we visited the countryside. We first drove to Slane, which is famous for its castles and massive concerts despite it being a very small town. It was on the drive to Slane it became apparent how important the town pride is in Ireland. Every town is perfectly clean and contained a Gaelic Athletic Association (GAA) pitch for the locals to play on. He went on to Newgrange, which was a gigantic Neolithic tomb, Celtic encampment, and old monastery site rolled into one. Our tour of Newgrange was fantastic and we learned a lot of interesting facts about how little was known about this mound of dirt that was older than when the pyramids and Stonehenge were created. The last stop on our countryside tour was at Trim Castle where Braveheart was filmed, which seemed way taller from the top than it did from the ground.

We finished our day with football practice, however we had an extra person. An Irish American football player named Cormac came to our practice and helped us out by playing defensive back and wide receiver. We discovered those were not utilizing his best talents when “Legatron” as I dubbed him (much to my teammates’ dismay) revealed his cannon of a leg when he kicked a field goal from at least 50 yards back and punted a ball into orbit.

On Tuesday we had to wake up early for our morning practice and as usual to this point, we installed plays and worked on them for the majority of practice. This practice had a different ending because the GAA legend Brian Mullins and Athletic Director of UCD came to our practice and taught us how to play Gaelic football. I loved playing Gaelic football and found it interesting how it seemed like a melting pot of techniques from football, soccer, volleyball and basketball rolled up into one sport. After our team destroyed the opponents in Gaelic Football we visited the Guinness Storeroom. This nine-floor museum greatly surpassed my expectations and provided more information than I knew existed about the history of Guinness, how it is created, and how the company has grown. The highlight of visiting the storeroom was going to the top where you could see a 360-degree view of Dublin and the many cranes present throughout the city due to the booming economy. We finished off our day by visiting a restaurant that had Irish dancers perform while we ate.

On the fifth day we started our day by visiting Croke Park, which is the Wrigley field of the GAA. We got a tour of the stadium and learned the various traditions and rules surrounding the athletes in the GAA and how, most importantly, they do not play for money, but instead they play for hometown pride. In the GAA museum they had a variety of tests such as kicking to a target and testing your reaction time, which greatly deflated any ego I had after playing one Gaelic Football game against Americans like myself who had never played it before. Next we visited the old British army barracks, an old school and graveyard.

The next day we woke up early to head to Belfast for an impromptu visit to the Titanic Museum in Belfast. The museum itself towers over you at the exact same height the Titanic was to give you a sense of how gigantic the boat was. The museum was one of the best I have ever been to and it discusses everything from how industry started in Belfast to how ship making became big to why the Titanic was created, to how it was sunk, and how it was found. Our guided tour in Belfast took us to the beautiful parliament building, which has been shut down for over 800 days and this was where we started to learn just how divided Ireland still is. I myself had never heard much about “the troubles” outside of car bombs and assumed it was a very minor conflict, but after hearing the description of what went on it sounded more like Sarajevo with the fact that walls were constructed extremely high so Molotov cocktails could not be thrown over. The one quote that struck me was when our guide said “British reporters loved coming to Belfast because it had all the action of a warzone and they could fly home on the weekends.” After our tour in Belfast we jumped on a ferry, which was more like a mini cruise ship that took us to a small port in Scotland. On the ferry we talked to a lot of younger high schoolers from Scotland who had been visiting Northern Ireland too. It was very interesting to see how different our lexicons were such as having to catch ourselves and call football “American football” so it would not be confused with soccer. When we got off the ferry we got to drive through Scotland and the views of the mountains and sea along the small towns like Ballentrae and Lendalfoot were breathtaking. The land felt so foreign because gorgeous beachfront property was not being developed like in the United States and was instead simply farmland. We also got a very quick drive-by tour of Glasgow, but unfortunately we did not get to see Sean Connery.

We started off the day by visiting the city of Edinburgh. I was surprised to see how much green space there was with a few parks in New Town and an absolutely massive park that contained three lochs, a multitude of pitches for sports and an extinct volcano. In our tour we saw two distinctly different castles. First we saw Holyrood, which is much more modern and used by the Queen when she visits Scotland and is not open to the public. Then we visited Edinburgh Castle, which was older, more accessible to tourists and turned into an army barracks later on.

Edinburgh Castle dominates the skyline in “old town” on a massive volcanic rock mountain. We then had a football walkthrough in a park with an open field right near the University of Edinburgh. Lastly, we went on a ghost tour of the city, but due to the pleasant weather it morphed into a more regular tour where our guide pointed out the most loyal dog ever “Grayfriar Bobby,” where a scene from Avengers: Infinity War was filmed, the street that inspired Diagon ​ ​ Alley and the coffee shop where J.K. Rowling wrote her books.

It was already Saturday, which meant it was gameday. We drove to Stirling University to play a team from the suburbs of Glasgow named the East Kilbride Pirates U-19. Even though we were on long stretches of highway with almost nothing of note except beautiful scenery, our tour guide was still able to talk our ears off with interesting facts and stories about the surrounding area. We traveled to Stirling University because it was one of the few American football fields available during rugby season. Stirling University had a permanent American football field because they are like the Alabama of American Football in the United Kingdom and have quite a few championships over the past few years. When we got off the bus we saw they had more than 40 guys and we were little bit nervous that they would outlast us. By the end of the first quarter those worries were gone and we were just having fun. With my first carry I surpassed my total rushing yards of the entirety of my senior season and with my second carry I surpassed my rushing touchdown total. The game was a fantastic experience and it was great to play football in another country with no pressure besides to represent your country.

The highlight of my trip was what happened after the game when we got to eat pizza with the Scots. Despite kicking these guys around for 48 minutes earlier they were extremely happy to see us and were welcoming. This comradery formed by suffering through the same experiences is an experience unique to football. Despite not knowing anything about the Pirates we were able to talk like old friends over the sport we both loved. Even myself not being a not very outgoing guy I was able to talk to the Scots. I was able to learn a lot about the Scottish culture and way of life through just talking with these guys for less than an hour. The man who put this all together, Patrick, put it best where he said “the lessons you learn out here will be more important than anything you will learn in the classroom.” I would have to agree with that sentiment a lot, but I do not think it will be enough to convince my teachers that I do not have to do the homework that was assigned last week. Overall, the Global Ambassadors trip to Scotland was a life-changing experience and I was glad to take part in it.