Basketball Season

I began my coaching career last week. I'm the only coach of the junior high boys. Tryouts were supposed to be held on Monday and Tuesday. However, I only had 13 guys show up, so I decided to just begin practicing. It's been a welcome back for me of sorts, because when I was in junior high, my team practiced outside too. I have quite a bit of talent, and I'll probably have to rely on that this Friday and Saturday at our first games. We are in a tournament with several bigger schools. We play at 5 pm on Friday, and then two more games Saturday morning/afternoon.

Last Wednesday was a frustrating day because the junior high flag football coaches decided to have a pizza party right after school gets out, which is 2:20pm. They were celebrating their football championship that they won before Thanksgiving. But they didn't tell anyone until the day of, meaning I had only four of my 13 guys for practice. To make matters worse, one of the players injured himself and had to sit out the rest of practice. The players did show up to the last half-hour of practice, but they were in a goofy "we-just-ate-pizza-and-played-arcade-games" kind of mood.

Thursday was much, much better because we actually had the gym due to the varsity teams being gone to a tournament in Las Vegas.

Friday was my coaching debut . . . for two teams that I don't coach! I had to coach the JV boys and girls because the varsity teams (along with the JV coaches) were in Las Vegas at a tournament. So, after learning the names of several of the girls, I proceeded to coach them to a miserable game in which the girls could never come back from a 12-to-14 point lead. The boys game followed and they actually played pretty well and we were leading at halftime. However, several players got in foul trouble and our top player fouled out in the third quarter. Then, in the fourth, things fell apart. We got outscored 26-1 in the final quarter. That's right, 26-1! I had only brand new players to work with, so we ended up losing.

So, I'm 0-2 as a coach so far! But I really love coaching and it seems like something I'd like to continue doing. I love planning out practices and seeing the guys succeed. We'll see how things go this weekend and I'll make sure to update about the games.