Ichabod basketball team preparing for 10-day trip to China
Aug. 1, 2006

The Washburn men’s basketball team will begin the first of 10 practices Wednesday at 3 p.m. in preparation for a 10-day trip to China from August 12-21. The Ichabods will play four games against two different colleges as they tour Shanghai, Hangzhou and Jinhua.

Washburn will arrive in Shanghai August 13 and then head for Hangzhou. After three days there they will head to Jinhua August 16 to play the Zhejiang Normal University team. The two teams will square off once again the following day before the Ichabods travel back to Shanghai. On August 19 and 20 they will play Shanghai Normal University before returning to Topeka August 21.

Head coach Bob Chipman has been well traveled during his coaching career. He has taken the Ichabods to France and the former Yugoslavia during previous summer trips and he also coached the United States team in the Pan American Games in 1983 and 1991 as an assistant coach. The 1983 team won the gold medal and the 1991 team took bronze. The Games were played in Caracas, Venezuela, in 1983 and Havana, Cuba, in 1991. He also helped coach the U.S. team in the World University Games to a gold medal in 1989 in Duisburg, West Germany, as an assistant coach.

China is the largest country in the world by population with 1.3 billion people and it is the third largest by area. The three cities Washburn will be visiting are on the eastern edge of the country and near the shores of the East China Sea. Shanghai is China’s most populated city with 17.4 million people. Hangzhou, one of the seven ancient capitals of China, has a population of 6.4 million people while Jinhua is a city of 260,000 people.