Basketball

Wellllll, when I was asked by Noel to coach one of the 2-4th grade teams, I was overly excited! Coaching really is one of my favorite things to do. So, after 2 weeks of "tryouts" we picked teams. My team is Eric, Davevontay, Emitt, Lativia, Octavious, Yakira, Jaspen, Donquilis, Jesse, Tyree, Javion, and Devin. 3 girls, 9 boys. We had 5 practices as a team before we had our first big game. Before the game, the kids were so pumped and like, we gonna kill 'em. Lots of talk, which is normal for a 8 year old boy. They were also nervous though, and I didn't want to tell them, but I was a little nervous as well. Then the game started. I put my two best players out to start the game (our other 2 best players didnt show up...unfortunately) and prayed that we'd at least have a chance. The other team didnt look like much, I thought, we can maybe take them. And then they scored. And they scored again, and again...and again. And our team, well, they ran around like they didnt know what to do and how to do it. I grabbed the other kids and threw them in, hoping they would have better luck. Not so much, actually I think it was worse, if it could get any worse! By half time, the score was 20-2. We sat down and I'm not proud to admit it but I kinda yelled at them. I was so frustrated cuz they didn't look like they had a clue out there. I told them if I saw any of them walking, they were gonna get pulled out. The other team had scored about 15 in transition, so I made sure they knew...GET BACK GET BACK GET BACK ON DEFENSE.
The second half begun. Yakira and Donquilis stood as the other team drove the length of the court and shot a layup. Devin...Jesse...go get Yakira and Donquilis. YOU WILL NOT PLAY IF YOU DONT TRY. But, but...coach Shasta...SIT DOWN. (They eventually went back in...don't get too worried). By the end of the game, my voice was hoarse, my head hurt from me shaking it so much, and all I could do was laugh. The final score was 27-4. So, yes...our team held them to only 7 points the second half. Yay. They improved...a little.
Here comes next Friday-practice night. I literally had about 15 different things to cover, drills to run, a play to set up....about anything I could think of that we were horrible in, I wanted to work on in one practice. Considering our practices are an hour long, we obviously didn't cover everything. We did get there about 20 minutes early, though, so I literally practiced the kids for the entire almost hour and half. Needless to say, they were pretty tired! We worked on transition defense, making good crisp passes, moving to get open, set up (or tried to) a real simple offensive play, knowing where your man is...and by the end of practice Yakira looks at me and says...that was a hard practice. Oh no! Did I do to much? Did I try to put too much in one practice? I don't know....we'll have to see...its 9:32 am on Saturday morning....we play at 12. Until then my friends...