Another weekend with basketball has been a mental godsend. Sure there's still practices and such, but with school letting out it was nice to not run around like a nutjob, pay for a weekend of hotels, gas, and food and add another t-shirt to the kids' collections.
The weekend wasn't completely activity-free. Maja's last year of crazy weeknights full of school sports, AAU practices, and dance culminated in the spring dance recital. Maja's dances netted her a 1st and two 3rd places at the competition which conflicted with her last tournament, it was time for me to drive 20 minutes to see her finally do those performances in a formal setting, rather than every night in our living room.
Rant: I believe this is year eight of dance for us, and I absolutely despise dance families at recitals. I'll take the rudest/most offensive AAU parents over the the clueless dance parents inviting 22 relatives to see their 6-year old dance for 96 seconds, then talking over/moving about/complaining about the other 2 hours of the show. I'd like to think we were pretty decent in the early years, and at worst, wised up by 1st grade with 2-3 extra relatives and finding seats that didn't interfere with others. /rant.
Finally seeing the performances in person, it's official: Maja's pretty darn good at dance as well. Her athleticism showed forth when compared to other girls her age, even those with better technique. It was an incredible afternoon and a long, long way from her waving her arms and doing tiny plies in Kindergarten. It also should be noted that her duet partner/classmate who had moved to Louisiana in March came back for the last week for the competition and recital. That's not a commitment I see from the AAU folk.
Right now, school is not her passion, and sports is that right mixture and fun and work and she's getting recognized for.
Dance? I'm afraid it's going to her permanent hobby, and I resigned myself to that earlier this year. I doubt her college and professional life will be dominated by it, but I believe she'll want this to be part of her life for as long as she's physically able.
That being said, I didn't mention scholarships, because, as luck would have it, she was award a Fall scholarship to the dance studio, covering all monthly fees for whatever dancing she wants to do.
At least one more semester/recital with a crazy schedule, coming up this fall....
Next weekend is just Millie's 5th grade team playing in a true invitational tournament. I know it's a big deal, because the coaches are finally compiling the "binders" with report cards/birth certificates, and documented exemptions to ensure the cheating is not as overt as has been alleged the past few weeks.
With that, the 5th grade index shifted slightly, mostly from mid and lower tiered teams.
As I entered data Saturday night, the "hated" Collegeville team at #2 moved closer and closer to Clutch with their active tournament wins, then dropped back to the almost the same gap in power index with two wins on Sunday. Despite two wins, to boost their win percentage, the wins were against vastly inferior opponents, and even after 24 games in, a very bad opponent's record will drag the index down.
In the same vein, the only other amusing thing I saw on the Top 15 was NJ Magic dropping, despite a perfect season. They simply have not played against against any significant teams of note, and even though I haven't found them in recent tournaments, their strength of schedule has declined significantly as the season progressed.
The 7th Grade rankings suffer from two significant tournaments I simply can not find results on. Last week's Comet Tournament in Philly had most of the major players, at least according to social media, but zero results on the various apps, websites, or even a PDF on the tournament page, like many third-tier promotions provide. This week was a major girls tournament at the Sportika complex in Central Jersey. There are at least ten teams on the schedule that should be 7th Grade/13U, but they're intermixed on a single master list with teams from 11U to 17U and to make matters worse, there's cross-divisional play that seems far worse than 4th graders playing up a grade, or a pool of 7th and 8th graders. I'll tray to cobble those together after I enjoy some free time this week.
The big move in the rankings are the Hazleton Lady Cougars, who did not fare well in a tournament in the Poconos. They're still 20-4, but I'd like to think Maja's school team frazzled them this week before playing some national teams (Probably not the case.)
As I
mentioned last summer, Maja's school sponsors teams at the Junior High, JV, and Varsity levels in a summer league at the major rec center in the area. With the previous 8th graders moving up to JV, and the incoming 6th grader ineligible to play until school finished on Friday, their first game last Monday benefitted from only having eight players, and half with AAU experience this Spring. The big con was that the other half did not appear to have touched a ball since February, if not longer. .
Let's add in the fact that the first opponent for the school team is the exact same Hazleton Lady Cougars that are on the regional rankings, needless to say, things looked bleak.
Yes, certain players were overwhelmed, stupid mistakes were made, and in the end, we lost.
They lost 30-29, with every one of the eight future 8th graders making one or two mistakes in the last five minutes that could have netted them the win.
Even with the horde of future 7th graders descending on tonight's game, I have hope that they can dominate the other teams for the rest of the summer.
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