The final AAU weekend before schools open up formal practice time for basketball was a mixture of relief and excitement. The twice-a-week drives downtown, interrupting other practices, the crapshoot of various fall tournaments, emphasis on the first syllable, the lack of correction at times are all thing I no longer have to worry about. . The excitement? Well, I'll save that for later.
After all the trips down here over the years, it's a bit of a surprise that the Zero Gravity "Rumble for the Belt" was the only tournament we travelled down to the Spooky Nook complex outside of Manheim. When the schedule was released, I noticed it was a smaller co-ed tournament, as only 15 of the 30 courts were in use.
Of course, the biggest news looming over all of us was sudden passing of our star player, Molly's, dad, the week after the last tournament. Practices were cancelled to let the girls could hang out with Molly and her family. The memorial service for Matt was this past Thursday, fittingly filling up a community center gymnasium to capacity, as people from numerous communities and organizations paid their respects.
With that horrible week finally behind them, they did benefit from a noon first game and drew an underpowered team from Central Jersey. Any worry how Molly would play was quickly negated, but against such a team, there wasn't much fight, as they rolled over them 54-15.
The afternoon game was against another Central Jersey, the quite competent Team Miller. I Millie's team has won every encounter with them over the years, but they were always the kind of games you participant in travel. Team Miller actually had the lead midway through the first half.
And then Molly exploded.
I don't have all the numbers, but between the last minutes of the first half, and the first six or seven minutes of the second, she went 7-for-8 from beyond the 3-point line, hitting a few shots that were closer to halfcourt than the arc. The 59-42 final score was not even that close.
Sunday drew an 8am game for every 7th grade girls team (but that you Daylight Savings falling back). The play-in game was simply the A Pool #1 seed (Millie's) team versus a Team DAPA from somewhere in Philly. They had height and over-aggressiveness on their side, but with Molly leading another great game, every girl had a moment to shine. Even Millie (yes my daughter) had a mind-bending play where she lured the entire team to follow her dribble around the arc, until she cut in and made a completely uncontested lay-up.
The noon championship would be the B-Pool #1, Sideline Cancer, out of Lancaster County. They had some quite sizable girls, triple-teamed the magic out of Molly, and there was a stretch in the 2nd half where they didn't make a second-chance shot in the paint, because they were 11-for-11 on first attempts. In reality, a 10-0 run in the first half sealed Millie's team's fate, losing 50-38.
Again, the post-game conversation wasn't about the refs (atrocious officials they recruited from Virginia apparently) or some significant adjustments that should have (but weren't) applied. Rather it was the excitement of the effort from the team in the steals, the ball scrums, the fast reaction times that kept the game from getting further out of hand, and reminded us that school practices start Monday, and that these girls (plus 4 or 5 others) will simply dominant all other local 7th grade girls playing an hour in each direction. Dunmore has twins, Hazleton plays an internal school district league that Molly and her teammate Anna will simply destroy, and Millie has her 6'1" friend Jordyn to dominate their schedule. Everyone else will be their top dog on their team by a mile, and do their interpretation of Molly to help the team, and develop their school teammates.
It's exciting times.
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| The team had warm-up shirts made in memory of Matt. |
And a proper pleas, if you will. Very few deaths are expected, but to pass away in your forties is an unexpected tragedy that few families have planned for. A GoFundMe has been established to help out the family through this time, and implore those who enjoy my little basketball rants, to give something to help them out.
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