Mandatory Basketball Rant - Winter 2022-23 - Week 10

Maja - Maja's Freshman season ended with two more convincing wins, so convincing, in fact, that she didn't even play in the 2nd half of either.   Since they couldn't finish business with the top team in the league, they finished with a very respectable 15-2 record.  Her points per game stayed at a measly 2, but every other stat (rebounds, assists, steals, and blocks) skyrocketed compared to her Freshmen campaign last year.   The offense already has a three-headed dragon, she's okay with simply feeding the beast right now. 

AAU tryouts seemed successful, and rumor on the street is that all of the 8th graders will be playing 9th grade this year.

Millie - Millie's Wolfpack team spent the weekend in Schuylkill Haven (Alchemist's Cove territory).  The tourney did offer some newer teams, but with the same results.  

After a full day of games, there was a rushed convoy heading up to Kingston Rec for a championship game between the Wolfpack and Millie's local team.   After three games, the Wolfpack finally finished them off for once, jumping out to a 15-point lead early and pouring it on to win the Championship.  Millie's team wasn't ready for them, and without Millie guarding the Wolfpack's top point guard, the massacre was pretty quick to predict.   Millie did manage to hit a three, plus a half-dozen assists, and five out of six turnovers charged to her were wide open teammates who simply weren't paying attention. 

Sunday was more of the same, with the Wolfpack's bench players playing most of the game, and the starters rotating in and out.  With a softer defense a 45-11 final score was not unreasonable, especially since the last 12 points came from the bench players.  

They did let her pose with both trophies from the weekend.

I'm amazed at the in-fighting and political maneuvering of the parents of the grade school kids.  Not surprised, simply amazed at what levels folks will go to ensure your kid trains and comes back to beat local kids by 21 instead of 20.  Millie's season with the Wolfpack is probably done, and the Local team has two final tournaments that, unless there's some surprises, should be cakewalks.  

Rec League - (A) Playoffs are full in hand, and (B) I hate adults.  They do their very best to eschew fairness and forget that the leagues are for the kids.    Refusing to change the schedule has generated hatred.  Changing the schedule launches a chain of hateful words.  It's just a lot of adults living vicariously through their kids.  Still, there's two more weeks and most of the complainers are still around.  

This weekend I flew around with undated brackets at the schools, extra score sheets, and reinforcing the rules before venturing out to Millie's tournament.  I came back to drop off Maja, so she and her friend could run scoreboard for the younger girl's playoffs, before we helped out with the biddy pizza parties.  

Now, the Biddy pizza parties went off without a hitch, partially because I revised the rules for their Hot Shots competition, eliminating never ending brackets and bored 5-7 year olds in a packed all-purpose room.  The younger girls games had controversy as Maja's crew caught a coach not doing the required substitution policy, specifically every kid needs to sit four minutes of the 32-minute game, and nothing was done about it.   The coach ignored the questions, the ref ignored the scoreboard team, and play continued.  

I'm going to have to flex my power a wee bit, because (a) Maja was teamed up with the most experienced scoreboard team in the league (b) with confirmed witnesses, the coach claimed they didn't have the player in question, even though they were standing in the middle of the court at the time and (c) the coach then claimed she had been taken out , when the worst player on the team had been removed for the first of three times in the games, a very verbose move to the witnesses.  We have a limited window to make any decisions with a very milquetoast board, but to actively insult the board member's kids who were hand-picked by an officiating director,  to handle these exact issues, and for all the other adults to ignore them, when they were in the wrong?   

I hate grown-ups.