This whole separate tournament locations for Maja and Millie is for the birds! Although I'm getting far less wear and tear on my car.
This past weekend, I got to take Millie (13u) to the Scranton Slamfest, while Maja's mother got the honor of fighting thousands upon thousands of people at the Live at the Nook even in Spooky Nook (Lancaster, PA).
It was also my birthday this weekend, so while Maja went down to Lancaster right after school for a 6:10pm game Friday, I watched over Millie, and Millie's Friday was going to be baking a lot of cupcakes, whether she like it or not.
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| My Official Birthday Sticker for the Weekend. |
The unfortunate news for Millie's team was that they were missing arguably their two best players, who decided to suit up for different teams that were attending the same Live at the Nook event as Maja. This left them four regulars and three girls new to AAU. The good news was the pool was tiny, composing of a Scranton AAU team, and the girls own 13U- B team.
For the first Saturday game against Scranton, the team adapted to this new concept call share the ball equally and play with high energy. The first few minutes were close, but they eventually pulled away with a 15-point win.
The second game against the 13U-B team started rough. Down by 4 and only shooting 9%, the girls rallied back under the center, Londyn's 25 point, 15 rebound performance to win 47-30. My high point? Millie playing such lockdown defense that multiple players went to the bench in tears.
My low point? The referees. It's been an ongoing issue, and with the excuse of "if we don't use these refes, we won't have games," I'd rather not have games.
Some of the zebras are good, but one assigned to Scranton High School on Saturday had no right overseeing a family Tiddlely-Wink tournament, much less an AAU game. When everyone in the building, family, players, coaches, and his replacement cringe at over a dozen horrible calls, from missing blatant elbows while staring at the action 10 foot away, to calling fouls on perfect screens and making no-calls on moving shoulder block screens that didn't level girls, but physical moved the girl in the direction the other player was still moving, like a football block, it was simply horrible.
The worse call wasn't even during Millie's games, but one in between, where down 19-16, the player shooting the 3-point shot to tie was legitimately fouled and the foul called. However it was waved off because this inept ref blew an inadvertent whistle for no good reason, killing the play and giving the winning team the ball to burn off the last seconds. (I got this directly from the ref who called the foul, whom I'm on good terms with).
While I was quite please with Millie's performance (Opponent crying and a 6 point 6 assist game) the most amusing part of the day came at dinner. Millie agreed to Buffalo Wild Wings and ordered her usual: 10 Wings, all-flats, extra-crispy Mild, Order of Fries with side of Mild Sauce, Shirley Temple.
Once the food arrive, I happily engaged with my burger, until the waitress came back. She asked Millie if she wanted water, and I thought her tone was a bit odd. Millie immediately said yes, though, and within seconds I saw her melt down and nearly spontaneously combust
It seems the waitress put in for WILD sauce on the wings (one of the three hottest they have) and Millie housed six of them before realizing something was amiss. Some water, some milk and four replacement mild wings later, and she had a fun story to tell.
With the two wins Sunday, Millie's team won the most important prize of all, a chance to sleep in rather than play the 8am play-in game for the title.
Credit to the 13U-B team, they won their 8am game for the right to the rematch and balled their hearts out. It was Londyn again, asking for permanent residence at the foul line for the last two minutes and giving the team a 50-47 and the championship. After championship t-shirts and cupcakes were distributed, it was onwards and just over two hours to reach Spooky Nook for Maja's last game of the weekend.
I'm the statistician for Maja's 15U team, do Friday night, Millie and I huddled around the laptop to watch them play the SI Liberty, the older team of the same program that gave Millie's teams fits in week one. This batch didn't disappoint, as they hit SIX three-pointers in a row (11 overall), to keep things close, but Maja's Clutch won out 58-55.
Saturday morning, Maja played just before Millie was supposed to go to a shout around warm-up, I was hoping to do stats for most of, but not all of the game, but the family recording the games for us encountered horrible wi-fi. It took me over 40 minutes to watch the first 10 minutes of actual play, and when we arrived at the CYC for the shout-around, I changed again, and the recording only lasted 17 minutes of actual play before failing. It's a little sad that there's little to no wifi in student rec center (but the University Gymnasium, where the second game was, had it in spades.)
Still 61-40 and 44-23 wins were impressive, even if I needed to construct stats for the first game, thanks to no parent or player remembering who even scored.
Sunday, the goal was to get down with an hour to spare and meet up with my sister and brother-in-law to watch Maja's last game, and conduct a dinner, much requested gifts for my birthday. We actually met, grabbed some light fare from concessions and talked, only to discover (a) the game started 30 minutes early and no one told us and (b) the inept scoreboard operator used a running clock (not in the rules) for the entire first half before being called out on it by the refs.
Even with poor scorekeeping, the inevitable happened, a 40-34 win that wasn't as close as the final scored suggests.
I somehow traded kids with their mom, and Maja accompanied me to the birthday soiree at a decent at best local chain of pub restaurants.
The random gift my sister got me this year? A Slayer cooler! .
I don't know if I want to use it for lunch, or get a job transporting blood or transplant organs.
The drive home in the waning daylight was difficult, and I did spend some time back at the house while dropping off Maja before heading home. I got my final gift there: Kids on Bikes: Strange Adventures Volume 1.
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