The Power of a Dream: The Story of Basketball Travelers, Inc.

To think Basketball Travelers Inc, now its 20th year of servicing the worldwide basketball community, started with two guys that simply wanted to travel to Europe for free!

Back in 1985 Nels Hawkinson was a young, eager coach of the Seattle Pacific University women’s basketball team. Just three years prior he had been an American professional basketball player and coach enjoying lutefisk, lefse and life in Oslo, Norway. Where once he had enjoyed traveling all over Europe, now he was stuck in Seattle on a miserly coach’s salary with no passport or travel plans in sight.

Then he got a crazy idea…what if he took American college teams over to Europe to play, and in return he got to travel with the team for free? Then he could visit his old Norwegian stomping grounds, as well as satisfy his yearning for travel, despite a tight budget. In collaboration with his childhood friend and basketball buddy, Neal Holden, a name and business model were formed and a partnership forged, thus establishing Basketball Travelers, Inc. Never did either think they’d make much more than a dime, much less still be in business 20 years later. For now, the first order of business was to find their first customer!

The first client to bite at the tour proposition was the Pac-Ten Conference All Stars, coached by Oregon State’s legendary Ralph Miller. During the summer of ’86, the team traveled to Scandinavia to play six games against Swedish and Norwegian club teams. Hawkinson’s wish to return (for free) to his beloved Norway was granted. A desire to turn a profit was not. Upon tally of all the bills, the tour netted a whopping $18.00, not including Hawkinson’s time or personal expenses.

Twenty years later, not only have Hawkinson and Holden turned their desire for free air travel into a successful business, they have added six employees and a third partner, Craig Jonas, to the company fold. What once began with the Pac-10 All Stars to Scandinavia has today grown to over 200 team tours all over Europe, Scandinavia, Australia, Canada and the Bahamas. In addition to foreign tours, Basketball Travelers also runs 19 basketball tournaments, ranging from high school to NCAA Division I levels and territorially from the Bahamas to the Caribbean.

Most recently Basketball Travelers Inc signed a two-year television contract with Fox Sports to broadcast the 2004 and 2005 University of the Virgin Islands Paradise Jam, an NCAA Division I men’s and women’s collegiate basketball tournament held in St. Thomas, USVI.

Undoubtedly the company founders, Hawkinson and Holden, never fathomed that their desire to see the world would culminate in a future that included television contracts and major college basketball events with such prestigious participants as Duke, Tennessee, and Connecticut, to name but a few. From its modest beginnings based on a man’s dream to travel, Basketball Travelers Inc. has developed into a company that has positively impacted and served the worldwide basketball community in a way that their founders could never have imagined. Never underestimate the power of a dream!