Y-Basketball 2009

With all of the illness this year, today was the 1st game that Marisa has been too, so these are the 1st photos we've gotten to post. Every Saturday someone has been too sick to come, so it has been just me and Jake.

Y-Ball has been great again. I had to take a bunch of extra kids from the neighborhood who were placed on another schools team, so we have a very large (12 boys) squad. The boys named us the "Green Slime" for the lovely shade of green jerseys that we got. But with that many kids, coaching has been a little bit of a challenge to make sure that the playing time is sort of equal, so I have an assistant coach who keeps them lined up in order on the bench and the ref's pause the game to let us sub in mid-quarter as well as at the end of the quarter so everyone gets to play. It's still a "no score" no stat" league, so it's just about learning and getting the skills down. Speaking of which.....

Jake is even better this year. He has a nose for the ball, has the moves and scores a couple of shots each game. This year he has focused on his defense to be more like Lebron James (I swear to God he watches more sports on TV than I do). If you don't watch a lot of NBA, Lebrons' big focus other than scoring is on shot blocks, he generally gets two or three a game, and he chases his guy down and blocks the shot from behind on the run. Now Jake thinks this is the coolest thing ever and has been working on it all season. He has actually done it twice in games now which is amazing because he usually one of the shortest guys on the floor. He has more fun blocking shots than scoring I think.

We have had a couple of "Coach/Dad" conferences as, because he watches so much NBA, he has started to preen a little bit after shots or blocks. As Coach I could let those go, but as Dad I just can't, so he's been pulled once or twice to make a point. I love coaching his teams, but it's probably good that I'm retiring after this season.

We had our pictures today, and have our last game and trophy party next week. It's a quick season, but LIttle League sign-ups are in January, it never stops around here....