Foulland home after season cut short
The former Berks Catholic and Bucknell star and his fiancée are back in the states following the dissolution of his pro league in Poland
Nana Foulland was practicing Saturday morning with his club in the Polish professional basketball league. By early Sunday morning, he was grateful to be back home in Berks County with his fiancée, Madison Reagan, after his season was cut short.
“It was so calm,” said Foulland, the former Berks Catholic and Bucknell standout. “Everything was going well. We were practicing and about to play a game Saturday night. Then all of a sudden, the league was canceled.
“Stores are closing. Schools are closing. Flights are getting canceled. The whole country’s shutting down.”
Just like nations around the world, Poland is taking measures to deal with the coronavirus pandemic. As of Wednesday afternoon, 251 cases had been confirmed there with five deaths.
“Poland had 50-something cases (late last week),” Foulland said. “They wanted to get control of it before it got bad. There was nobody I knew who had it.”
After playing in Romania and Israel, he spent this season with Trefl Sopot in the PLK and averaged 12.4 points, 8.8 rebounds and 1.3 blocked shots for a team that was in sixth place when play was suspended. The team had finished 15th last season in the 16-team league.
“We had eight games left, plus potential playoff games,” Foulland
said. “We had already been cleared to play without fans. Who knows what they would have done? They might have shortened the season. We just moved up to sixth. It’s been a pretty good year.”
When the league suspended the season Saturday, Foulland and Reagan reacted quickly to leave Poland and return here. Reagan traveled from Warsaw to Frankfurt, Germany, to Newark, N.J.; and Foulland was aboard what he said was the last flight out of Warsaw, to the United States.
“I’m just relieved,” Reagan said. “I was planning to leave once things started getting a little weird. Italy started closing down. We had a friend in Italy who had a horrible experience getting out. Once that started happening, I just wanted to get home.
“There’s a little sadness he didn’t get to finish the season.”
Foulland said after his flight arrived in at JFK Airport in New York, it took at least three hours to go through customs and coronavirus screening.
“It was hot,” he said. “It was disorganized. It was chaos. When it was all said and done, they took my temperature. I got cleared and then I got my bags. We got home around 3 (Sunday morning).
“I would say we’re definitely relieved.”