Mandatory AAU Basketball Rant: Week 10 with Added Dance and Jr High!

 For a regular year, kids start playing winter basketball in November, turn over to AAU or spring ball, and are usually done by this point. 

We're sputtering towards the finish that won't be officially over until the 4th of July!

There was a dearth of 6th grade teams across all the tournaments in the region, so only Millie's 4th Grade team was playing.  At first glance, we made a collective sigh of relief, there was no chance of needing to divide and conquer trying to catch both kids playing at the same time.

The new problem: Millie's championship (and they've always made the championship game this year) started three hours and five minutes before Maja's dance recital was supposed to start.

Back Home.  In Northeast Pennsylvania.  Two plus hours away.  

We arranged up transportation for Millie to get home, and we figured we would miss the last five minutes of game time to jump in the car, fight traffic, and get Maja to the recital with a half-hour to spare.

Of course, you do have to play the games to ensure all that planning is necessary.  

It did not seem to be a problem.  Her team scored more points that the bottom two teams scored combined, and they weren't bad teams.

Millie's coach finally discovered what we knew all along, that Millie is a Center in a little body.

We also had my sister and brother-in-law come out of their COVID seclusion in West Philadelphia to watch the girls play live.  They started watching basketball on TV, so these games were a nice reinforcement on everything they were learning.   Combine that with Maja is turning into a modern version of her aunt, and I think everybody had great conversations when we went out for dinner. 

.... and those restaurants are back to 110% capacity.  Even after our 7-8,000 people at Spooky Nook, getting crammed into a restaurant, maskless, is a weird feeling I'd like to avoid most of the time.  

On Sunday, my wife's OCD of scheduling cursed and saved us at the same time.

During Millie's final pool game (an 8am early blowout), she could only find one of Maja's three dances in the recital program, so a quick text to the studio owner revealed everyone was looking at the wrong program.  

To avoid all the possible COVID complications, the studio set up three separate recitals in an outside Shriner's pavilion outside of town.   The class my wife had been staring at was a different class than the one Maja was in, hence the confusion.

Her recital wasn't at 4:45pm.  It was at 2:30pm!!!!

After 15 minutes of sheer panic mixed with the dread of missing all Millie's championship game, we grabbed breakfast, stopped at Target for jean shorts for the one number, and dropped Millie off with the family that would take her home.

We flew up the Turnpike and arrive at the site with a little time to spare. 

Full confessional:  We loved watching both our kids dance since they were wee ones.  We hate every other human being at a dance recital.  We were never the crazed video/picture people, and by the time Millie was dancing in Kindergarten, we had nothing but contempt for those annoying parents.   pacifier, jumping in front of cameras.

Maja's group presentation (the opening number no less) was perfect, but her solo was bookended by pre-school and kindergarten dance companies running around like mini-mobs, plus a toddler chucking a pacifier at her in the middle of the dance.  It was still a solid performance that she powered through.  The closing number was Footloose, and looked great, especially since they had only rehearsed it the last two weeks.  

Any time Maja wasn't dancing, we were those indifferent parents, ignoring the third dance troupe performing to the Mary Poppins Returns soundtrack, refreshing our phones for the score of Millie's championship game.  

Clutch 21  Team Thrill 19

Their opponents were a tough bunch in pool play, but with experience a little time to game plan, it was a much tougher go.  Players fouled out. players were injured, it was a mess. 

I haven't gotten to see the video of the game, but one of the storylines that held was little Millie forced to play Center again blocking out the big girls, stealing rebounds, and forcing jump balls when she couldn't.  4-3 isn't a usually a great record, but it's not bad for 4th grade girls in championship games.

I think we're looking at one more tournament for Maja and two more for Millie, culminating in the National Championships in Philadelphia (a misnomer, every large national tournament organizer hosts a national championship, but she's been invited to two of them, where most of the programs weren't invited to any.)

Normally, we'd collect ourselves, feed and rest the kids Sunday night, and start week 11 practicing for the next tournament Monday night.  With dance gone for the summer, we added one new monkeywrench was added to the schedule:  Maja's Junior High team.  

We got word of the Middle School/Jr High's summer program and Maja was signed up instantly.  I mean, the reality of it is, most kids can still aspire to put on their school's colors and play for the community.  

Biggest "problem" has been Crestwood's strict adherence to the rules.  Nobody could start practice until their spring sport was complete, and 6th graders could not start until they finished their school year and became 7th graders.  It was no major issue, as Maja's dance conflicted with the practice time, but having witnessed one of the practice when I was shooting around with Millie, the AAU practices are much more beneficial during that time.   

After all that, 14 girls showed up for Monday's game, and a lot were still missing.

Fun fact, four player on the AAU team were on the court: three girls for Crestwood, and the star player on the opposing team was the their Center on AAU. Guaranteed we were cheering most of the opposing team's points.  

Final score 34-10, Maja with 2pts, 4 rebounds, 2 assists, and 4 steals in nine minutes.   A solid introduction to their coach for the whole AAU teach... and not too shabby, since she won't have her first practice with the team until later today.