Basketball

This basketball season is frustrating so far. We just don't have enough time to practice.

First off let me say that this league is the best recreation league of any I know of or have been involved in, at this age level. We have 10 kids on our team and play 7-minute quarters. Each team plays 8 games and everybody makes the playoffs.

We get a gym for 1 hour for practice each week. Games have 2 referees and use the entire gym. We don't have 2 games running sideways on the small hoops simultaneously like many programs do.

However, at the 3rd and 4th grade level, 1 hour per week is just not enough. These kids are so raw, we could spend each practice on fundamentals (ballhandling, passing, shooting, defense), and that would be best for the kids development.

But we have a game each week and if we just work on fundamentals, the kids won't be working together and the game becomes a series of one-on-one match-ups and the best individual players will dominate the game. So we have to try to put in some kind of offense with a basic play or 2 that the kids can understand and know how to run.

We had 3 Saturday practices back in December (before Christmas). Then we were off for 2 weeks for the holidays. After New Years', we started back up with a weeknight practice and then our first game. We lost 21-7. The good news was, 3 different kids (Jacob, Luke, & James) scored for our team.

The second week we had another practice (our 5th) and another game. We lost again, 21-6. The good news was, again 3 kids scored and they were 3 differnt kids than scored the first week. And we did have more passing than we did the first week. So in our first 2 games, we had 6 baskets and a free throw, scored by 6 different kids.

I think that shows that we have a balanced team. Unfortunately, like I said before, when the kids don't execute a set play, at this level, it becomes a one-on-one game and the team with the best individual player will win. And we just don't have any dominant players on our team.

The third week we had yet another practice and then our Saturday game. At halftime we were behind 18-4. I challenged the kids to forget the score, start over at 0-0, and go out and win the 2nd half. They actually began working together a little and outscored the other team 10-8 to win the 2nd half, but the final score of 26-14 meant we are 0-3 on the season.

Four different kids scored, including one that hadn't scored yet, so in 3 games we have gotten 7 of our 10 players to score at least one basket.

We had a pretty good practice last night and hopefully on Saturday the result will show that we have continued to improve.