I know it's been a long year when I forget that I did a weekly rant on the "regular" basketball season. I won't do week by week this year, at least by label, as we're already a month into the seasons. I'll start by burying the lead.
Local Rec League: Still Vice-President of the league. Still not getting anything pushed through that needs updating, rather the board is swooning to the desires of a few, a few who will not be working with the league at all in a year or two. We've gotten rid of the obnoxious parents from the last few years and replaced them with benevolent dictator parents. At the end of day, despite all the hand-wringing from parents, officials, and league officials like me... the league plays on and the kids learn basketball and have fun.
The biggest thrill for me has been Maja and her freshman teammates becoming active junior referees this season. I'm biased, but Maja's the best of the bunch (per the official PIAA refs we use alongside them).and all of them are more active and more vocal than the last two years of recruits.
Varsity: Maja made the JV team as a freshman, but that just means she's a bad game by another player, an injury, or an exceptional JV game by her away from .getting some playing time. It also means that she still attends all Varsity games, including the Tip-Off tournament they played in last weekend. They won their first game and came back Saturday to play a New York State Semi-finalist team to a last second tying shot, but eventual loss in overtime. Not bad for a team coming off a 8-13 season and starting a junior, two sophomores, and two freshmen this years.
Funny story, most of these tip-off tournaments have four teams: two local that might not play each other every year, and two out of the area teams (us and the New York team). We knew the site was the one participating high school, and that was about an hour away. What about half the parents didn't know is that the site was changed on the team website on Wednesday, so half of us drove to the other "local" team in the tournament... which was another 40 minutes away from the site, over dark and rainy country roads carved out by the original Pennsylvania settlers, or original native trails that were never improved upon. We all had a good laugh once we found civilizations.
Junior Varsity: Maja got to start on the JV team on Monday. 2pts, 8 rebounds, and a flurry of other stats in a 4-point loss. The best player on JV is also a second or third player off the bench for Varsity, so she plays the first half only.
Freshmen: In what must be a family trait, Millie not only made the Freshmen team, but was declared a starter as a 7th grader. But unlike Maja's 7th grade year where she ended up playing 7th, 8th, and Freshmen, Millie is locked into Freshman only with only possible chances to play "down" if things go catastrophic for those teams. The team is four 7th, 6 8th, and 2 9th graders and is very talented, but incredibly balanced. First scrimmage was a 61-31 rout of the local "elite" catholic school Freshman team, so here's to a healthy season.
7th/8th Team: Unfortunately, taking and keeping the junior high talent for the Freshman team leaves scraps. When Millie's local travel team coach took the gig, amid some controversy last summer, I think she imagined rolling through both the 7th and 8th leagues with her five core 7th graders. Only one of her girls didn't make Freshman, so she is the workhorse for both grades. When I wasn't getting lost in the Endless Mountains of Pennsylvania this weekend, I was at the old tech school gym where the leagues are hosted. Fun fact: the 7th graders won both their games. Somehow I left at halftime on Saturday and didn't make it until five minutes into Sunday's game, yet I didn't miss them score any points. They led 8-2 at halftime, and held onto with 8-5. And despite eventually blowing out their opponent on Sunday, they were behind 4-0 in the first before I walked in to see a beautiful steal and lay-up get them on the board. I do not want to be their good luck charm, but I'll show up as necessary.
The 8th graders had some delusions of grandeur, and when the Freshman coach only took taller, more athletics players, the other girls had hissy fits, including one that was a favorite of mine last year. A mass exodus of girls quit the team, leaving a point guard who was very serviceable last year when she didn't shoot.... and now she has to shoot all the time. I miss their Saturday game due to the tournament, but I'm still trying to figure out how they won 24-10 that day, and got utterly obliterated 30-10 by a vastly inferior program.
Youth Rec League Travel! After years of COVID excuses, or "building back up to it" from the board, the local rec league finally decided to sponsor a team for the 6th grade Kingston Rec league. (This is the same league the Millie's crew played in as an independent the last two years). I've sort of positioned myself as Grand Vizier or Old Wise Man Advisor to the trio of coaches. The team is large (11 girls), with only three with experience "off the mountain". Their first game was Sunday night against the always well-prepared Dallas program. After giving up an eight points in the 1st Quarter, our team finally scored a few times, to a 21-6 loss. It's a new batch of girls to learn names to keep score, and a lot of 5-in, 5-out substituting, but this is my 5th (!) years going to these games. They will get better.
No comments:
Post a Comment