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.
5 comments:
its sounds like how i played soccer in 3th grade, where the whole team just runs around following the ball. i guess that's why i quit soccer, and the fact that my family made fun of me for making sounding effects every time i kicked the ball. Your team though looked inspired by you in the team photo!! regardless of wins or losses you guys should be proud to be sporting the best team photo, or team that has the most fun! i mean i had that mentality in college! and only i can make fun of Hopes wins and losses because i had to be part of it, so i WILL take offense to anyone else that chimes in with some smart donkey response. Well, i think this was a great usage once again of a superbowl commercial that helped illustrate your story. I think i am going to start calling the pitter patter drill, the butt giggler.
As for the guts of ur house and the paint color, i say u go with the color of GUTS, not the nickelodeon show color, but actually human guts..ok bye
shoot 3rd grade not 3th i was debating if i played that way still in 4th grade or not..haha so much for proof reading
Wow...I wish that I could play on your team! I think I might just fit in...I think I am about the same size as most of those girls...and I would probably do more giggling than following routines too! (Sadly, you know this from experience!)
I think the next best thing you could do is translate all your name plays into spanish. Only because pancake in spanish is my one and only, hands down, no competition, favorite word of all time!
Now don't you want to go look it up! :)
I love this post! I can just picture all of you little girls running around trying to look cute for the boys.
I am also a little embarrassed to admit that I was one of them- On my softball team, on my basketball team, on my volleyball team and on my soccer team.
I think it's why in my adult life, I'd rather just run by myself. :)
Funny how we both ended up coaching kids who are clueless about basketball. You don't know how many times I've refrained from saying to my high schoolers, "we could do that in 4th grade! What is your problem?" I think you were a dominant presence at a young age:)
I LOVE the names of your plays. Do you remember when coach asked us to name a play and Sarah Travis insisted on a Harry Potter term? I can't remember all the details but I remember liking her even more after that. How boring is "chin" and "2" and "square?" I kinda wish we had a play called pancake. I also wish I could have seen you coaching, telling your girls where to run and what routines to run.
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