Day: October 6, 2022

A quick kid hoops update, as L’s St P’s team has hit their (stupid) fall break-break.

First, a refresher about the dumbness of the CYO girls basketball schedule.

Girls hoops has always been a fall CYO sport, so that the gyms are cleared out for boys basketball and boys/girls volleyball in the winter. Never mind that girls volleyball should be a fall sport, to mirror high school and avoid the core travel season. This is the way it has always been in CYO, and CYO isn’t about to change.

Since the Catholic schools around Indy are all on very different academic calendars, fall breaks are scattered throughout October and of various lengths.[1] This has always caused problems with fall sports, especially girls basketball which schedules games every day of the week. It is a huge hassle to get your schedule and then start fielding calls from opposing coaches asking to reschedule a game because their school is on break when you were supposed to play.

“We can’t play October 5 because of our fall break. Can you play October 12?”
“Nope, that’s when our break starts.”

🤯

Three years ago CYO came up with a plan to alleviate this. No, they didn’t move the season back, starting in late October and then playing up to the holiday break, which would make the most sense. Rather, they moved the season up two weeks so it starts as soon as kickball ends and then shut games down for three weeks to avoid all the breaks. Starting as soon as kickball ends means actually selecting teams before kickball begins and then practicing throughout kickball season. It’s a true joy for basketball coaches who have girls from multiple kickball teams on their rosters to try to schedule a practice that avoids all the kickball conflicts.

This is super dumb and I haven’t met a single person who thinks it’s a good idea. After year one there were a ton of complaints to the CYO office and they basically said, “This is our fix and we’re not changing it.”

That “fix” manages to interfere with the seasons of three different CYO sports and add yet another activity to the schedules of girls who are playing sports outside CYO. Again, the obvious fix is to move the season back. Then kickball and basketball won’t overlap. Girls who run cross country will be done with their seasons before basketball games begin. Most other outdoor club sports will have wrapped up by then, too.

Oh, and of course they don’t do this for football. The boys play right through the fall breaks.

I promised a quick update so I’ll turn rant mode off and get to the hoops.

L’s team wrapped up Part One of their season last night. It was also their final home game of the year, so the 8th graders got introduced before the game. Several of L’s teammates from last year who are in high school came back to watch her, too, which was fun.

The opponent was St. I, a team we’ve never beaten. Last year they beat us by approximately 150 points. If I recall correctly they scored 20 points before we could get a bucket, and then we only scored because they stopped pressing. We scored six straight and they put the press back on and made sure that little rally got snuffed out.

Fortunately that score was mostly because of the girls who are now freshmen. But L and her classmates had never beaten the girls their age, either. I think they beat us twice in both fourth and fifth grades. Those wins were built on the play of two girls. Two girls that L played with last winter and has become good friends with. We knew if we could somehow control them, we’d have a chance.

We got out to a 4–0 lead, which compared to last year was a great start!

The rest of the first half was your typical, bad CYO basketball. Lots of airballs and turnovers. Both teams played good defense but had little working on offense. St. I got their best player driving and she hit a few shots and went to the line a lot. We were down 14–12 at halftime.

On the first possession of the second half L found a seam, drove, and tied the game. Two possessions later she made the same move and we had the lead. We never gave that lead up, winning 24–20. The eight graders celebrated ending the St. I curse, as one coach called it. They hugged their teammates and then their opponents. It wasn’t a bad way to end their home careers.

L ended up with six points. She played some terrific defense and controlled the offense. Her team just can not make shots, her included. She was 0-fer on jump shots, only scoring at the rim or from the free throw line. We never got our inside girl going, as she was a little sped-up. She grabbed some big rebounds in the second half, though.

I again kept team stats. We were 4–24 from the floor in the first half, but 5–12 in the second half. Both teams had quarters in which they shot 1–13. Yeesh!

We hit the fall break-break at 2–1. Our girls will take an extra-long break because the eight grade trip to Washington D.C. is the last week of the month, so their next game isn’t until October 29. Then they have to play three games in four days before taking almost a week off before their final regular season game. The smart thing would be to stretch those four games over the nine days they span, but I’ve already told you about the logic involved in CYO scheduling.

Our girls will scrimmage schools that are not in our division four times and practice some in there. L and I are going to work on her jumper when we have time, as she seems to have hit a rut. Oh, and the Cathedral team she is playing for starts practice this coming weekend. There might not be any official CYO games for awhile, but she’s going to have plenty of chances to work on her game.