Saturday, November 25, 2006

Basketball jones



This is Sammy, all sweaty after the day's 2nd game of basketball, outside cooling off & talking to his daddy who was at work, missing all the basketball fun.

The boys won their first game in a nail-biter. Down by 2 and one of the boys hit a 3-pointer in the last few seconds of the game. Very fun to watch.

They lost the 2nd game, again a nail-biter. They were up most of the game, tied at the very end and lost it at the last second. Sammy had a one-hand hook or tip in basket on which he got fouled and got another point at the free throw line. Very cool. The boys all played great. Good match.

The 3rd and final game was also exciting. The other team took an early lead, but our boys hung in there and played strong. Tied at the end, and so they did a 2-minute overtime. Still tied, so they went into a 2-minute sudden death... the first team to get 2 points would win the game. In the first few seconds of sudden death, the other team fouled one of our boys... who happens to be one of the best free throw shooters, and he sunk 'em both. And the crowd went wild!

Tell ya what... it was a heck of an exciting day of basketball watching these 6th graders play with all their hearts.

Seemed like a good group of parents and fans, good refs. The only bad spot in the day was the coach of the boys we played in the 3rd game. One of those very loud, excessively bossy coaches who lets fly with the criticisms loudly. Yelling at the boys & chewing them out while they're on the floor. I think of those type of guys who coach kids' teams as "negative coaches," aka assholes. At one point, the ref had called an out of bounds on one of our boys, so the other team got possession of the ball, and then I'm not real sure what happened, but a friend of mine was sitting at the time clock table and heard the whole thing... negative coach said loudly (not really sure why) "the f---ing asshole" and the ref heard it. Technical. Duh. (Also, a very ironic choice of words.) Our boys got the ball back, but first one of them got to shoot twice from the free throw line (made one, I think). The whole thing was weird. Then while our boy was shooting the free throws, my friend heard the woman who was the assistant coach, and we think the negative coach's wife, say something to him about calming down, and he turned to her and barked, "shut up, bitch, or leave the bench." So I'm hoping it was his wife, because I can't imagine him saying that to a mother of one of the other boys he is coaching... but I felt so sorry for their son, even if he didn't hear it when it happened, there were about 6 boys sitting on their bench... so he'll likely hear all about it, along with everyone else... How sad.

I asked my friend what the woman did, and she said the woman quietly and carefully sat down on the bench.

How sad.

You hear all the horror stories about coaches and parents who can't behave at their kid's sporting events... but I have to say that I really haven't seen that much poor behavior through the many years of Joycie's and now Sam's games in the various sports. Once in a great while... I've never seen really poor behavior from our teams, the kids, parents, coaches... the really bad stuff has always been the other teams. We're a pretty good group of folk, I guess. It's all about the kids, and that's our focus. I'm proud of us.

I'm really proud of our Sammy, too... he did great today, played hard & tried his best, he was a good sport all day and he was a sweetheart to me.

I love that boy.

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