I thought we were officially in that lull for AAU, as local rec and school ball take over for the winter, but still they drag me back in.
Millie's team of a million point guards and undersized out-of-position centers did well this fall, well enough, in fact, to garner them an extra tournament at a showcase event this past week. Only girls, only grades 5-8, but with teams stretching from New England to North Carolina.
I had mentioned in previous installments that that mechanism for challenging a player's eligibility was significantly compromised or removed from these fall tournaments. While athletic events will bring out those well beyond the 100% for their age, I still feel like some of these 12-under teams had girls drive to the site after a full shift at their jobs. Millie (and Millie's team) is woefully undersized against urban programs pulling from much larger populations, but I still question whether or not some of the girls were held back two or three years to stay in 6th grade.
Further complicating this late tournament was the opening week of games for the local rec league I'm still a part of, and even worse, it was Maja's school tryouts for 7th/8th grade basketball.
As has been the pattern this fall, my wife took Millie down to the tournament, and I ubered Maja to Friday night and Saturday morning, and to make sure the games went off without a hitch.
To get the home front stuff taken care of, Maja's 8th grade team has one girl with a long-term injury, and one new player to fill in that slot. The 7th graders brought a deluge of 16 players to tryouts, including four that played with Millie long ago.
As I checked up on rec league games while Maja was at her Saturday tryouts, the text messages started coming in. Millie's first opponent was a top level team who completely switched programs in Upper Manhattan. Their same girls grew since the spring, ours did not, so it was a legit 42-30 loss. Their second opponent was even tougher, the Drexel Hill Comets "National" team (the usual competitive travel team also played and played well.) Not only did they beat Millie's team 47-34, but beat the NYC team.
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| It was that sort of weekend for #4 |
Regardless of the outcomes, Millie played hard, had lots of ball handling, a few points, and few more assists, and lock-down defense on the big girls.
Sunday, I left Maja to here own devices to get to practice (more on that later) to make it down to Lancaster for he day. Another nationally recognized program, and at least two girls that were either much older than the rest, or I feel sad for their very early onset puberty. No shots went in, they could only stop the big girls about 80% of the time, and the officiating was abysmal (equally abysmal for both sides but it impacted our play style more.) By the time they were halfway through the 2nd half, down by 13, Millie's coach sat as many starters as she could and let Millie and the bench play. In those last eight minutes, the other team only widened the lead by four more, winning 47-30.
The final consolation game for the weekend was against an even more undersized team from the eastside of Manhattan. They too brought their two big girls, who skill-wise seemed just fantastically oversized, but they also brought tiny girls who would easily be the smaller girls in our local 3rd grade league. The first half was closer than it should have been, but they pulled away with their only win of the weekend 54-20. Millie had perfect three, a few rebounds, and a no-look pass that made everyone stand up... and the ref curse out in disbelief. It was a good experience, the program organizers know exactly who they need to be recruiting for to add to the team (or hang all the girls upside down to make them grow), and Millie is in mid-season form for the winter. God help those other teams.
And Maja? We always run through all the options when it comes to tryouts, and with a glut of Freshman girls, it didn't look like the Big 6 7th graders who played Freshman last year could be maintained.
To my surprise, only nine out of the thirteen Freshman girls came out. Five of them made at least JV, and in a strange twist, not only did Maja make just Freshman (no 8th grade team), but the Big 6 added two more 8th graders PLUS three 7th graders. It's a huge team, but after Maja's report after the first practice, I think the balance of power remains the Big 6's to lose.
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