Coming of Age Moment?
My little girl has been as sick as I've been this past week, but she loves bastketball and didn't want to let down her teammates yesterday, so we all sucked it up and ventured out into the cold and damp for her game, both the venue and time of which were rescheduled earlier in the week.
Their opponents were the same team that physically thrashed them a year ago in their worst defeat of last season. That encounter was at their gym; yesterday was the rematch.
It's difficult for me to say how much better my daughter's team is or how much their opponents have dropped off, or whether it was just home court advantage. But the game was much more competitive this time, though for at least the first half it looked like the end result wasn't going to change very much.
One thing about team sports at the sixth grade level is that on any given team, only one or two players will have any real talent, and the remaining kids are just taking up space. Yeah, that's cruel, but it's also true. And I can say that, since my daughter is in the latter category.
In basketball, the few talented kids will be the ones who dominate the ball. If an ordinary kid brings the ball down, s/he will back it in until s/he's two feet behind the backboard and swarmed by all five defenders and throws the ball away. That happened countless times in the first half, and it was made worse by the fact that the other team boasted two really tall girls who took turns erasing one shot after another.
What kept the game in reach was that, unlike last year, this year's version of the rival opposition wasn't as talent offensively. So an initial four-point deficit never got any worse, and the game was tied back up at the half.
The third quarter belonged to my daughter and her teammates. Oh, she was still feeling tired from being sick all week (she took no shots but did have a steal and a rebound), but her teammates came out like a band possessed. Gone was the timidity and passivity on both ends of the court. Now they were actually taking open shots and making quite a few of them (for sixth graders, you understand...). It was like both the girls AND their coaches really wanted this one.
A four point lead after three quarters quickly disappeared, but the girls held on for a hard-fought 24-18 victory in which, for a change, it was two girls on the other team who took some hard spills and had to come out of the game. Not that I'm celebrating THAT part, but I was very impressed by the effort put forth by our girls. This was the kind of game that they would always lose last year. They'd beat smaller teams, but whenever the other kids were their own size or bigger, they'd all but mail it in.
Not this year.
What a way (3-1) to go into the bye week. Next Saturday sonny boy and his crew are back in action.
Hopefully he brings his shooting eye with him, and a better attitude to match.
Their opponents were the same team that physically thrashed them a year ago in their worst defeat of last season. That encounter was at their gym; yesterday was the rematch.
It's difficult for me to say how much better my daughter's team is or how much their opponents have dropped off, or whether it was just home court advantage. But the game was much more competitive this time, though for at least the first half it looked like the end result wasn't going to change very much.
One thing about team sports at the sixth grade level is that on any given team, only one or two players will have any real talent, and the remaining kids are just taking up space. Yeah, that's cruel, but it's also true. And I can say that, since my daughter is in the latter category.
In basketball, the few talented kids will be the ones who dominate the ball. If an ordinary kid brings the ball down, s/he will back it in until s/he's two feet behind the backboard and swarmed by all five defenders and throws the ball away. That happened countless times in the first half, and it was made worse by the fact that the other team boasted two really tall girls who took turns erasing one shot after another.
What kept the game in reach was that, unlike last year, this year's version of the rival opposition wasn't as talent offensively. So an initial four-point deficit never got any worse, and the game was tied back up at the half.
The third quarter belonged to my daughter and her teammates. Oh, she was still feeling tired from being sick all week (she took no shots but did have a steal and a rebound), but her teammates came out like a band possessed. Gone was the timidity and passivity on both ends of the court. Now they were actually taking open shots and making quite a few of them (for sixth graders, you understand...). It was like both the girls AND their coaches really wanted this one.
A four point lead after three quarters quickly disappeared, but the girls held on for a hard-fought 24-18 victory in which, for a change, it was two girls on the other team who took some hard spills and had to come out of the game. Not that I'm celebrating THAT part, but I was very impressed by the effort put forth by our girls. This was the kind of game that they would always lose last year. They'd beat smaller teams, but whenever the other kids were their own size or bigger, they'd all but mail it in.
Not this year.
What a way (3-1) to go into the bye week. Next Saturday sonny boy and his crew are back in action.
Hopefully he brings his shooting eye with him, and a better attitude to match.
posted by JASmius at 8:51 PM
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