......and Basketball

Jake started his AAU season last weekend.....and it's going to be a long one. They had enough boys to form two Boise High AAU teams. Jake is on the White team with a couple of his buddies. This is real basketball, with High School rims and rules and a coach who played Women's BBall at Oregon State, so it's no more messing around. They spent the first few practices learning offense and defensive plays, positions etc. and then proceeded to get blown out in the first weekend of play, losing both games by at least 20 points. They were painful to watch. So coach stripped the offense and they have started all over. We'll see how successful that is. 

Jakes coach is great. She was coached AAU for the last 8 seasons or so and has gone to the finals a couple of times in this age group, so we were looking forward to the season. As with all his coaches, she immediately fell in love with Jake and he played all but a couple of minutes of the games this last weekend. He did really well and she likes him as a player, shooter and ball handler. He was really disappointed how much they struggled, but I reminded him that this was just like his little league season last year. The team may not be very good, but it's a great year for him to get a lot of playing time and improve as a basketball player. Last practice, his coach had her Dad come in (a lifetime basketball coach) and guest coach. He was a VERY old school coach, sprints, fingertip pushups for not listening etc. I figured Jake would be all upset at being yelled at for an hour and a half, but to my surprise he dealt with it just fine and didn't even mention it afterwards (other than how sore his fingers were). He has never had an actual COACH-Coach like that, it's just always been some kids (most of the time his own) Dad doing it. But as he continues to play, he's going to have to get used to some stronger authority. It was good to see he could handle it. 

They play two games every Saturday at two middle schools over in Meridian. The schedule is just brutal. Most weekends we have an early game (8:30) and a late game (4:00 or so), which gives us just enough time to drive back and forth across the valley to get to Tanner's game (which is right down the hill) and back. 

Tanner's second grade team is pretty much the same team that I had last year and is more of less just the same group of kids I coach in baseball as well. There are a lot of natural athletes on that team and they're pretty easy to coach. Our first game was this last Saturday and due to some gym screwups we were only able to have one practice beforehand. No score is kept still in this league, but the dad's on the sidelines like to keep score and we beat the other Hidden Springs 2nd grade team 30-8. So it's going to be a pretty easy season I think. Tanner loves to play basketball and he and his buddies have a really good time. It was good to sprinkle that level of fun competitive basketball in-between Jake's two frustrating games. 

We all went out to dinner after Jake's late game and it was a lot of fun. It looks like that's going to be our schedule for the next couple of months or so. If you need us on a Saturday, just know that we're at some basketball gym somewhere in Idaho......