There’s been a lot of talk about M here lately. Maybe too much talk. A few words about her sisters.

Middle Sister

C has had a pretty quiet summer break so far. She has filled M’s spot working for their aunt the chef on weekends a couple times. She will take that job over full time in August so this has been good preparation for that.

It’s good that she’s made a little money. Once school ended any reservations she had about driving disappeared. She’s been zipping all over the place. It helps that a couple of her closest friends can’t drive yet and she’s been running them around. Monday she had been gone for a couple hours and texted me asking if she could pick L up from summer school. So I guess she’s enjoying driving. I hope that means she’s a little more comfortable than she was back when I was riding with her in preparation for her driving test.

We’ve had to have the talk with her a couple times about “Hey, it’s great you’re spending time with your friends, but you might want to slow down on the trips to Target, the mall, or meals out because you’re blowing through your meager bank account balance pretty quickly.”

She has allegedly reached out to a couple places about working but they either haven’t called back or told her they aren’t hiring. Kid needs to find some way to make some cash, though.

(Not So) Baby Sister

L is a week-and-a-half into summer school and seems to be enjoying it. Friday when I picked her up and asked how her day went she said, “I made five new friends today!”

I asked her if she just walks around and talks to random people.

“Sure, what else am I going to do?”

I used to say she was destined to be class president because of how she brought people together. She might be on that track again.

Tuesday she told me three boys asked for her Snap account. Oh boy…

The basketball has gone pretty well. She’s fit right in at practices and is having fun.

Last Thursday she played in two JV games. She didn’t do a whole lot as the offense was pretty raged and the girls were clearly uncomfortable playing together. A couple looked like they had never played organized basketball before. L scored two in the first game, four in the second.

In that second game she played against two of her travel teammates, which was fun. Their travel coach was there to watch as his daughter was playing on a different court before us. Nice that CHS won that game by 25.

Then Tuesday night she and a few other JV girls got invited to play up in the varsity league. I was both excited and nervous for her. I didn’t want her getting killed by some 18-year-old woman. I wasn’t sure how much she would actually get to play, so told her just to have fun, listen to her coach, and pay attention to what the older guards were doing.

She played a fair amount and did better in those games than in the JV ones.

She looked comfortable and generally ran the right stuff, especially when she was on the court with varsity girls. When it was 4–5 freshmen together things got ugly. One of those youngin’ spells turned a 10 point lead into a six point loss. In their defense, the freshmen only gave up about half of a 19–4 run, and when the starters came back in they didn’t do anything to change the momentum.

She was 0–5 in the first game. Three of those misses were runners in traffic I could tell she rushed. I told her after the game I could tell she kind of went, “Oh crap, I’m wide open!” and tried to get rid of the ball before someone rotated to her. Another miss was a half-court heave at the first quarter buzzer that hit the front rim.

In game two she was 1–5, the only make a two with her foot on the 3-point line. She looked more aggressive in this game. She played several minutes with four starters and did not look overwhelmed.

CHS as a team maybe shot 20% for the night. I told her not to worry about her misses as long as she was taking good shots when she was open.

I don’t know that either team they played was super good, or that either of them had their full varsity rosters. But my biggest takeaway was that L just needs to get stronger. The times she struggled the most Tuesday were when older girls got a body on her. She struggled to handle that pressure, and it was obvious that she was a 14-year-old getting bodied by 16 and 17 year olds. Once she starts true strength training I expect that to be a huge help.

She’s always been smart on the court, and that will improve as she and her teammates get more familiar with what their coach wants them to do. There is still plenty of room for skill improvement, but her shooting is so much better than it was this time last year.

Keep improving the overall game and add some muscle and I’m feeling good about her high school basketball future.

(Late update: I did not mention how much she played. I would say she clocked roughly ten minutes in both games. These games are 10 minute quarters with a running clock.)

In related good news, she claims her knees haven’t hurt for nearly three weeks. I was very worried about her being on the court three straight days this summer. So far, at least, it seems like the knee pain that has plagued her for over two and a half years has receded. Fingers crossed that doesn’t mean she is completely done growing. I’d love for her to add another inch or two before she’s done.

Other than being tired, she was raring to go when I dropped her off at 5:41 for this morning’s workouts.

Mr. Scorekeeper

As I have done so many times over the years for CYO sports, it seems I have become the official scorekeeper for the summer league team. Which I don’t mind. It keeps me calmer, lets me listen to the coaches, and helps me to learn who all the CHS girls are. As a bonus if we have any crazy parents (I haven’t figured that out yet, but it seems inevitable) it keeps me away from them.

This probably makes me a bad person, but it drives me a little nuts how no other parents have come over and said, “Since you did the first game, can I do the second one?” It was the same story with L’s winter league team through CHS. I would do game one then hope to sit in the stands for game two, only for L to run over and ask if I could run the clock again. In four months of games, no other parent ever volunteered to split duties with me.

If it was more in my personality type, and I wasn’t a freshman parent, I would send a message out to all the parents with a signup sheet for the rest of the summer.

Instead I’ll just be smug that I’m always the one checking in with the coaches to see if I can handle the book for them.