2016 has been quite the year for Kyle Cooper. The former Hillsdale College basketball star was named 2016 GLIAC Player of the Year in February, graduated in May, and got engaged in July. In June, he signed his first professional basketball contract with Amics Castello in Castellon, Spain.
“It’s a huge opportunity,” Cooper said. “It’s awesome to have the chance to have a team sign you to a contract. It’s a high level of basketball and it’s a great city.”
Amics Castello plays in LEB Gold, the second highest basketball league in Spain. Cooper also received offers from teams in Australia, France, and Germany, but LEB Gold features the level of basketball he was looking for.
“It just seemed like the best opportunity out of the bunch,” Cooper said.
Hillsdale College basketball head coach John Tharp helped Cooper begin the process of pursuing a professional contract in the spring. Tharp said Amics Castello is “an incredible place” for Cooper to begin his career.
“We are very proud of Kyle Cooper in everything that he has become as a basketball player and more importantly as a man,” Tharp said. “Like all of our players in Europe, we wish him all the best and look forward to monitoring his rookie season.”
Cooper left for Spain on Aug. 20. Since then, he has had to adjust to life in a new country.
“There are hardships I wasn’t really expecting,” Cooper said. “It’s more of a mental struggle sometimes than I realized.”
The language barrier has been the hardest thing for Cooper to break through. While he speaks some Spanish, he doesn’t consider himself fluent.
“Going to a restaurant, going to the grocery store, going to the pharmacy, it’s hard to communicate everyday choices with people because I don’t speak their language and they know I don’t speak their language,” Cooper said. “But besides that, I really have no complaints.”
Cooper lives with a teammate from Colorado. The rest of his team speaks Spanish — but they know enough English to communicate.
“Some of them actually speak decent English, and hand motions and gestures are always helpful,” Cooper said.
Cooper is just a 15-minute drive away from the Mediterranean and has gone to the beach several times since arriving in Spain. But most of his time has been taken up by preseason practices. Amics Castello practices six days a week. Four of five of those days the team will have two practices, so most days Cooper spends about seven hours at the practice facility.
“It’s definitely been tough,” Cooper said, “but I wake up, and eat breakfast, and go to basketball practice, come home, eat lunch, and chill out until I go to basketball practice again. It’s not a bad life by any means.”
As Cooper has had to adjust to life off the court, he’s had to adjust to the faster style of play on the court.
“The game here is more free-form and guys are a lot looser,” Cooper said. “The style, offensively, is not as rigid.”
Cooper played his first preseason game on Aug. 29. Amics Castello lost 83-65 to Valencia, a team in Liga ACB — the highest basketball league in Spain. Last season, Valencia finished third behind Barcelona and Real Madrid.
“They are really, really good. I’m not going to lie, they beat up on us,” Cooper said. “But it’s a preseason exhibition game so it’s not anything really to hang your hat on.”
Cooper started the game and finished in the top three on his team in rebounds, assists, and blocks, but suffered a poor shooting night.
On Tuesday, Cooper and his teammates flew to China for a 12-day, three-game preseason tour in Xi’an, the capital of the province of Shaanxi. Basketball will be the focus, but the team will also have the opportunity to tour the region. Cooper is grateful for the opportunity to visit a country and continent he’s never been to before.
“I just feel really blessed that the game of basketball has me living in Spain, and it’s taking me to Asia,” Cooper said. “Basketball has given me so many amazing opportunities to see the world and experience life in different cultures, and I just feel really blessed by it.”
Amics Castello will begin the regular season on Sept. 30. Like soccer leagues in Europe, LEB Gold features a promotion/relegation system in which the best teams each season can move up to Liga ACB and the worst teams are sent down to the lower league. Cooper appreciates that the threat of relegation doesn’t allow teams to tank.
“It’s a pretty cool system because it keeps competition alive,” Cooper said. “Nobody’s attempting to lose games because you don’t want to go down a league.”
While the best teams each season can move up to the top league, some elect not to so because they don’t want to deal with higher costs and tougher competition.
Cooper’s contract lasts until the end of the season, so he could return to the United States any time from the end of April to mid-June, depending on how far Amics Castello advances this season. Cooper said whether he returns to Spain after this season is “super dependent on a lot of different variables.”
“If there are opportunities to further my career in Italy or Germany or Portugal, I would have to consider those. So I’m definitely not tied to Spain, although I wouldn’t complain about staying in Spain,” Cooper said. “Especially if I was able to move up to Liga ACB — that’s pretty much one of the highest levels of basketball in Europe — that would be a huge opportunity, and I would be more than happy to stay in Spain to play there.”
