Imagine booking a trip two years ago, paying thousands of dollars, and then less than two months from the travel date, you’re told it’s no longer happening.
That’s exactly what the University of Dallas men’s basketball team is dealing with.
A trip two years in the making
“How do you let this happen. As a company, it’s your job to fulfill your clients’ trips and bookings, and we gave you this money, so what happened to it?” questioned Luke Paton, a freshman basketball player on the team from Frisco.
Matt Grahn, the head coach for the men’s basketball team, said the team gave a company called GoPlay Sports more than $60,000 for a trip to London. Grahn said he’d been working with the company for the last two years to plan the trip. The basketball team, along with help from family members and friends, chipped in to raise the money to take the trip.
“We worked,” said Michael Kennedy, a senior member of the team. “I also spent a lot of time selling Gatorade at school soccer games just to raise anything because $60,000 is a big sum.”
“We’re just trying to do it, penny by penny,” he added.
A player’s special moment denied
The trip was especially significant for Kennedy because he’s from London, and he wanted to share where he grew up with his teammates.
“I was going to show them, like, where I live. I was 100% confident this trip was going to happen; nothing could have gone wrong, but it did. I just, it feels like betrayal a little bit, you know, two years of working with them, but for what?” Kennedy said.
Another factor in all of this: Kennedy would have been able to play in front of his parents.
“Their health is not quite as good as it used to be, so they won’t even be able to come to my graduation, and so it’d been super cool for them to see the team one more time,” Kennedy said.
Grahn, the head coach, reflected on what it would have meant for Kennedy.
“If I’m asking those guys to come here, I think it’s worth a trip to take them home. At least once so that they can play in their college uniform and in their hometown,” Grahn said.
A company disappears
Grahn said that on April 9, 2026, he received an email from GoPlay Sports, saying the company was “taking steps to enter a formal Chapter 7 bankruptcy process” and could no longer fulfill any future bookings. The company also went on to claim in its email that “A combination of bookings and increased cancelations due to the ongoing situation in the Middle East has rendered it impossible for GoPlay to continue operations.”
Grahn admitted that sharing the news with the team, along with friends and family members who pitched in, wasn’t easy at all.
“Difficult, I don’t think even scratches the surface of how I felt about it — I was embarrassed. I was completely embarrassed,” he said. “We’ve worked so hard on this trip as a group. The players put an amazing amount of work and effort into this, and then to go back and say, ‘Hey, there is nothing,’ — shame, embarrassed, angry.”
CBS News Texas checked company records. As of publication, it appears that GoPlay Sports has not filed for bankruptcy. We’ve also reached out to the company, but we have yet to hear back.
Grahn said the University of Dallas legal team is looking into the matter. In the meantime, he’s trying to find a way to make the trip still happen. Kennedy, meanwhile, admits he and his teammates are left in a tough position.
“I don’t want to just beg people for donations, but we don’t really have much else right now,” Kennedy said. “It’s not like we can spawn in another $60,000.”
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