Coaching 6th and 7th grade girls basketball is proving to be both challenging and rewarding. In all honesty, most of the time I feel more like a wrangler than a coach. Does anyone remember that great Superbowl commercial from a few years ago that followed a bunch of cowboys moving a herd of kittens cross country? Now you can picture what I am going through...only my kittens have to be dribbling a basketball which makes it a harder feat. (Why do I keep bringin' up Superbowl commercials you ask? No idea...but I need to get over it.)Now I do not want to come across as having an over-inflated sense of athletic ability, but I remember playing basketball in 6th grade and I am about 88% sure that I never looked like what I have been seeing lately in games. Relax, because although I am cocky enough to block out any double dribbles or baskets scored on the wrong hoop, in retrospect I do realize that I was not the dominant presence that I visualized myself being at the time.
Some of my favorite moments from the season thus far:
1) My tallest player has developed the odd habit of boxing out her girl LONG before her girl has shot the ball. This is a hard technique to refrain from laughing at. Fortunately, the parents do not hold back their laughter so I do not feel obligated to keep a straight face. All the while, somewhere in the back of my mind I always ask myself, "what do I have to complain about?". Hey, at least she is boxing out...a term the girls giggled at two months ago.
2) When my girls are sprinting down the court, stop on a dime with a panicked look on their faces, and look over to me for directions. I then point to the way they are supposed to go and they carry on their little enthusiastic way.
3) During a voluntary post-practice group prayer one of my players asked Jesus to help the team remember their "routines". "Plays" ladies...we call those things plays. Ah, who am I kidding? I couldn't care less what they call them as long as they remember them at least 25% of the time.
4) When given the chance to name their own plays, my girls came up with names like "Pancake", "Waffle", "Mouse Trap", and "Rat". Obviously I got clowned in this department because I am the only one that has to yell these "routine names" out repeatedly for an entire gym full of adults and unforgiving teenagers to hear.
5) During our first practice we were tackling the finer points of defense by doing the "stand in one place in a defensive position and 'pitter patter' your feet until you reach muscle failure" drill...or at least that is what the coach's books call it. Anyway, one of the girls started complaining about what I thought to be the hard drill. When I stopped to listen to her protests, I found that she was complaining that her butt was jiggling and she did not want the boys to see. The rest of the team unanimously agreed that this "butt jiggling" would be murder for their social lives. Long story short, we turned the drill around so it was my bouncing caboose facing the mostly male crowd watching our practice...and the girls were happy again. Oh, the joys of coaching teenage girls.
6) It took almost the whole season, but it happened, we scored on the wrong basket. Now, keep in mind that our field goal shooting percentage is around 6%. That should give you an idea of how big of an accomplishment a score on the wrong hoop really was for us. Not only did my girl have to forget which basket to shoot on, but at the same time she had to make the one shot out of MANY attempts on the first try. Well, it happened, the perfect storm. The cute thing was that she did not even know that she did something wrong. Apparently when everyone is yelling at the same time, the words "WRONG WAY" and "NO" are hard to make out!? All I could say was, "nice shot"...and it really was. Unfortunately we wasted a hard to come by "nice shot" on the "wrong basket". Maybe I should change my outlook. There are no "wrong" baskets, just "less right" ones. After all, it was the only shot she made all season.
Our win/loss ratio (2-7) is nothing for the record books but the girls have improved every game and are starting to look more like little players than lost kittens. That is about all a coach can ask for.
Today is our final regular season game. After that we turn our attention to single elimination playoffs...a.k.a. our last game. These girls have been a joy to coach and I will miss their unbridled enthusiasm when we have to part ways.
Good thing we have the details stage of this little project to turn our attention towards:
Roof, done. Log railings, done. Now we will focus on the "guts"...and the paint colors.
Who wouldn't want those thighs?