Kid Hoops

A weird weekend for L and her teammates.

We were in Bloomington for this week’s games. While that seems close it also involves navigating a shit-ton of construction and means we’re in the car for nearly three hours each day.

Saturday we opened with an easy win. In fact, I’m not sure we’ll ever have an easier win. At halftime we were ahead 39–0. We added 16 more points before these poor girls finally got their first bucker. That’s a 55–0 run. FIFTY. FIVE. TO. ZERO. Sadly that was the only basket they could muster, and the final was 65–2. Our girls really didn’t try to score too hard in the second half and, thankfully, the clock ran the entire time.

Obviously there was a big talent disparity here. Our girls were also hitting just about everything they threw up – we hit 3’s on four of six possessions at one point in the first half – and were dominating on defense as well. The other team took only six shots for the entire game because they were either turning it over or we were just flat stealing it before they had a chance to shoot.

We learned afterward that two of the girls were sixth graders, and most of the rest were going into 8th grade. I’m honestly not sure they could have competed against six graders. There was some real strangeness in the bracketing this weekend.

I will give those girls this credit: they never got frustrated or angry. They kept trying, as best as they could, and were smiling after the game. Props to their coach and parents for teaching them to stay positive.

After dispensing with them we watched our program’s C team win a tight contest that was physical and a little nasty. We walked over to warm up for our second game, but no one was warming up on the other side. Things were ahead of schedule but as we got closer to tip there still wasn’t anyone on the other bench. The tournament director called his contact for that team and got some long, sob story about how a bunch of girls quit on the coach this week so they couldn’t field a team. Sure would have been nice if they had shared that information ahead of time to either adjust the schedule or just let us leave early.

The tournament director offered to let us play the first team again, the team we beat 65–2, but our coach politely declined.

So we “earned” a 20–0 win by forfeit and headed to downtown Bloomington for an earlier-than=expected dinner.

Sunday we went back down for the semis/finals. Our first opponents had gone 1–1 Saturday, losing to our C team. So we didn’t expect much. But these girls were tough, guarded the hell out of people, and had a big girl who could move her feet and block shots anywhere in the paint. Six minutes into the game we were down 3–0. Not exactly getting blown out but also not looking anywhere near as good as we had a week earlier. We went on a run after calling a time out and led by 14 at half, stretched it close to 20 a couple times, and ended up winning by 12.

On to the title game against our C team, who we beat handily the one time we’ve played them this year. They had a couple different girls this time, though, including one who was on our team last year and one of L’s CHS friends/classmates. Still, we knew they weren’t as good as us if we focused and played hard. Which is what we did. We got an early lead and never let up, winning by 19.

So, good team weekend.

L did not have such a great weekend. Her jump shot was not working at all. She hit nothing outside the lane in our three games. She also missed a couple easy layups. She had a few bad turnovers. In short, she didn’t play nearly as well as she did in St. Louis. She had six points and three assists in the blowout Saturday, but only two points in each game Sunday. She did not want to be in the team picture after, and made sure she was as far from the championship plaque as possible. She pouted most of the way home. I let her stew in the backseat with her headphones on while I listened to my own music. As always, I respect the bitterness.

Next weekend is our final week as a travel team. We go to Cincinnati for a four-day event. I’m guessing the competition will be a little tougher. We know our first three games are against teams from New York, Nashville, and Cincinnati.

Weather

As we drove back to Indy I noticed it was hard to see buildings downtown. Yes, that good, ol’ Canadian wildfire smoke we have been missing returned!

And there was the added bonus of a line of heavy storms blowing in. We drove through two squalls once we got within 15 minutes of home. Then, just as we pulled onto our street, the skies really let loose.

For the next two hours it absolutely dumped. I don’t have a rain gauge but the weather stations in our area I can pull up all had between 2–3” of rain for the night. When I put our pool cover pump out once the storms had passed, it sunk completely below the water level and was still completely submerged after it had been running for an hour.

During the storm, it would pour for 10 minutes, then stop for five. Then the winds would kick back up and rain would start blasting again, occasionally with small hail. This pattern repeated for two hours. We had three different severe thunderstorm warnings in this stretch. At one point the winds got up around 60 MPH. We ran outside to move some of our patio cushions and the rain was literally blowing sideways, soaking us even though we were well back under the patio roof.

Our power flickered off-and-on at least five times during the first 20 minutes of the storm before it went off for good at 6:45. It stayed off until nearly 10:00. We are just getting our fridge fully stocked again after our extended power outage two weeks back. I was not enthused about starting all over again again. I think we dodged the bullet there.