The Dramedy of an AAU Basketball Weekend

Alright, so this happened over the weekend:

Maja's AAU team had their first "away" tournament, and many of the players, and a LOT of the parents finally discovered that sports aren't fair.  

There are not a lot of 3rd/4th grade divisions in local tournaments.  Most tournaments (hence most programs) start with a 5th grade division cut-off, so we were badly underpowered for our visit to Scranton.  Throw in a few parents of the better players who, despite getting schedules with dates and locations, thought every tournament for the team was in the "red gym" of our home base CYC, so their kids missed the first game and a half of the weekend.

And in that first full game they missed, our little club had an unfortunate rematch against the Lady Storm, the same team that thumped them 27-4 in their first game ever.  

With six players, four of them tiny third graders, it was a slaughter.  

Dad's Silver Lining:  Maja scored two of the three points in that game and the ignominious fact that she scored six of seven against them in the two games.  

Maja's Silver Lining: She got to play the opening jump ball and WON.

Maja vs the 4th tallest kid on the opposing team.

The rest of the weekend went better, with more size appropriate teams, and just thorough trouncings instead of the original blowout.  

The best trait about my daughter is that she's played on teams against larger and older players so much that she's like a duck.  Get her a drink, a snack, and a place to sit and rest, and her problems roll off her back and she's ready for another go at it. 

When Maja was asked to play on the AAU team, I firmly said no in my best patriarchal voice of the family... and my wife promptly cut a check and dropped her off at practice anyway.  From what I read she still had another year before most teams in the area wanted anyone to even think about trying out.  We could take those registration fees and put it towards basketball camps, her birthday, household bills, but better yet, we would avoid the worst plague that seeps out of AAU:  Parents. 

Parents are the bane of every kid's enjoyment in sports.  They tend to focus entirely on their child getting the most playing time possible when they have a hint of talent, and when the kids are benchwarmers  they scream to take away talented kids' time in the name of "fairness."

Unfortunately, about half of the kids' parents had no clue that AAU was competitive basketball, not a pure developmental community league.  Equal time is not mandatory, heck a few teams that mention it only say that each player should be playing at least six minutes in a 28 or 32 minute game ON AVERAGE.  

I don't get a sense of entitlement some parents have (and subsequently trickling down to their kids), especially since it was broadcast before out first practice that we would be horribly overmatched in "away" tourneys.  

Little Millie caught Tournament Crud (just as bad as Con Crud) and fell ill Monday night, so I couldn't attend Maja's practice.  Of course, an EMERGENCY PARENTS MEETING was called and in the end, the annoying parents are still indignant, and our poor coach and the program managers were relieved that my wife (and me by proxy) and three or four other parents had their backs. 

Again, it's not any player's talent that gave me reservations about Maja playing AAU, it was entirely the soap opera drama of the parents turned up to eleven.  

The best part of the weekend?  After numerous games, drama, and road closures for the Scranton half-marathon, we grabbed lunch on Sunday and went home, only to have the girls request a trip to the park to play more basketball for two hours... 

.... and yeah, we worked on some positioning drills in that that time to help correct the 10+ shots in a row that she missed at one point.  I could go into a variety of excuses for why that happened, or become defensive and start bad-mouthing the other players like the obnoxious parents, but it was far more rewarding to spend some time with my daughter on a beautiful afternoon, and help her get better, all the while passing the basketball back and forth.