I'm coaching the team, 1st and 2nd graders. We had bad attendance these last two weeks with the holidays, and having to have Saturday practices. Only four of the 8 kids showed up for the last practice before our first game. That was the first practice where we worked on things like inbounding the ball, free throws, getting back on defense.
So I knew the game would come as a total shock for half the kids. I sent them out there and in the first quarter, they had no idea. Inbound the ball? What's that? That kid just scored! Now what do we do? Who am I guarding?
The kids went down 10-0 in the first quarter. I was relieved we scored 4 points in the second quarter. We made an adjustment and put one of our better kids on their scorer, and it helped. By the end of the game, we lost, but we slowed them down... I think the score was 16-8. I don't know, we may have scored 10.
At one of the breaks I told the kids, "Come on! This is a game! Go out there and hustle... act like you know what you're doing!" One of the girls said, "But I don't know what I'm doing!" So I told her to fake it.
We had practice again tonight, and 7 of the 8 kids showed up. We worked hard with some of the kids who really struggled, and I think they made some progress.
Evey? Evey is like me when I was her age... shy around the ball. She just runs up and down the court. She doesn't demand, call for, or really want the ball. It's not that she isn't having fun... she just isn't interested in making any waves out there. She had a few rebounds, not much else, in her first game. I think she took one shot all game.
Hopefully I can work with her some more in the next few practices. We have worse players on the team... she's good enough to not need extra attention immediately... but she also deserves some attention, especially from her old man.
No comments:
Post a Comment