Basketball Season (the unlocked out kind)

In the midst of all of this self-inflicted chaos (should we sell?, will we sell?, will we build? will we go insane?), we had a really fun day today.

Today was the first game of the YBall season. I am coaching Tanner's Kindergarten boys team and assistant coaching Jake's 3rd grade team. If you are having trouble wondering what kindergarten boys basketball looks like; imagine cats, all hopped up on Mountain Dew and catnip with a big ball of yarn and that's pretty close. Even at this age, there are four or so boys who have good athletic instincts and those who the light tends to flicker on and off as to what they're even doing on the basketball court.

So we had our first game today and given the way life works, both of the boys games were at the exact same time in two different gyms pretty much across town from each other. Since I figured that today was Jake's 19th game, and it was Tanner's 1st, we sent Jake to his game with one of the other boys on his team and all went to see (and coach) Tanner's 1st game. The boys did great. We worked on all of the fundamentals in our two practices before the season started, so they dribbled (most of the time), knew where they were supposed to be on defense (most of the time) and shot at the correct basket. Our opponents, not so much.

At this level, the penalties are all

instructional and we spent a lot of time getting the ball out of bounds as the other team was stealing (not allowed) and playing gang up defense (also not allowed). Additionally, they would pick up the ball and tuck under their arms like football payers and run down court. So the game didn't have a lot of flow. But we scored a couple of baskets, which is always amazing at this age. Tanner scored and played great defense. He has really good instincts for basketball and really took off flying today. He had a lot of fun and it was a really good game.

Jake's team apparently crushed the team they played. This is the first year of keeping score and they won 38-22. The is also the year they get their first "real" basketball jerseys (as opposed to the Tshirts that the little kids get). Jake has three other boys on his team who are really good and they ran the score up to 30-12 or so before the coach told them that the four of them were supposed to work on assists for the rest of the game. I was told Jake scored 10 points and did a good job on defense. Next week our games are close in time but don't overlap so I should be able to see most of it and am really excited to see him play in a game where the score counts.