yes, another kids coaching story (Update: 2016-17 edition)

I am coaching my daughter's 4th-5th grade in-town team and assistant coaching my son's 1st grade team.

The 1st grade kids pretty much have no clue -- we have one girl who has scored all of our points this season and on offense, my son tends to play the free safety in a cover 3 zone. But is fun to watch them run around and I'm a firm believer in having kids try to do some form of exercise at least 5 days a week. The parents are very supportive for both teams and while score is kept informally, that is certainly not the object.

The 4th/5th grade team is kind of strange. There is a travel program this year, and while it is no-cut, pretty much any girl with motivation/talent for hoops chooses that option as is it "only" 3x a week. So we are left with the rest of the kids and you have 90 minutes each Saturday to hold a practice and then have a game. The guy in charge of the league is super motivated about us keeping score and the playoff standings and I'm not a real big believer in that as most of the kids don't understand all of the rules yet. The hardest part is that if we aren't in fast break mode, it is very difficult to pass the ball in the half-court unless a player isn't being guarded as picks and screens are not really being executed.

Here is my one parent issue this year. A girl on my team was dropped off for a game and had no parent present. After the game, I took a couple of minutes to b.s. with some of the parents and the ref. I also knew the coaches for the next game and talked with them for a few minutes before heading out about 10 minutes after the end of our time slot to take my son (and daughter) to his practice. On the way out, I see one of my players waiting alone in the hallway and I ask her if anyone is getting her. She says that her mother is on the way and I tell her that I need to leave, so she either has to come with me or ask one of the other coaches for help if her mother doesn't come. She says that she will wait and I don't hear anything more all week. The next week, her mother unloads on me, telling me that I was responsible for her daughter, that her daughter was hysterical crying when she arrived and I needed to wait. I told her that I understood that she might be upset, but that I don't run a babysitting service, she didn't text/e-mail that she was running late and I left her 11 year old daughter in a safe place. She goes to the league and raises a stink, which gets ironed out despite my refusal to apologize.

Was I wrong?

 

No, you didn't do anything wrong, but get used to it -- one truism of coaching is that every team has one kid whose parent(s) do not live by Western civilization's silly clock.

 

Whew. After text-vomiting on the club volleyball thread, this week we will try to keep kids basketball reasonably brief.

1) StarSis arrives at 8:45 a.m. after dropping Sis-13 off at the volleyball tourney. Instead of my usual 9:18 arrival for a 9:15 tipoff, this week I manage to roll in from my 80-mile drive at 9:13. Woohoo me!

2) This week's opponent has several tall girls sporting dreadlocks and no white kids on the squad. The schools in the town here are not particularly segregated; most have about 25% minority enrollment. For whatever reason, this is the first team we have seen in 2 seasons of play with no white kids on the roster. They are wearing strangely non-threatening all-pink uniforms.

3) The game starts off and both teams are ice cold, although the Power Pandas are getting most of the loose balls and thus most of the shots. The first quarter ends 2-2. StarSis sits out both twins in the first quarter.

4) Second quarter, the twins each play a half-quarter. "Sophie," our hotshot newcomer, breaks free for a couple layups, the "Pinks" throw in a shot in the final minute, and at halftime it's 6-4.

5) Third quarter, both twins are in the lineup. All of a sudden, the Power Pandas start stripping the ball clean at halfcourt as soon as the Pinks cross the line. For about four minutes of the six-minute quarter, the ball never advances inside the 3-point line. The twins get 4-5 steals and breakaway layup each, but miss them all. StarSis's offense features '5 to the boards' -- in little kids basketball one of the main things on offense is to get shots up on the rim and hope to score on putbacks. This works great, along with the patented 'Lineup' inbounds play, and all of a sudden we have ripped off 12 straight points to make it 18-4.

6) Fourth quarter, StarSis pulls off the halfcourt press; even though no official score is supposed to be kept, the refs say, "hey, the Pinks havent gotten the ball into the lane for like a quarter now," so she dials it back.

7) After the deep freeze of the first quarter, the Pandas offense is now banging on all cylinders. In addition to the "Lineup" inbounds play, Sis has put in a 'wheel' play for halfcourt offense, and it starts peeling kids open every time down too. Everybody on the roster scores, except the twins, who have each piled up a bucketful of steals and assists. Final score ends up 26-10 and everyone is happy.

If only the athletic day could have ended right then.

 

My 4th-5th grade girls team was trailing 20-12 going into the 4th quarter on Saturday. We outscored the other team 12-0 and won 24-20. It was pretty amazing how loud the parents of both teams got -- in the last 90 seconds, we scored 8 points.

The highlight was when our team got totally confused on an inbounds pass under the other team's basket and allowed about uncontested 7 shots before anyone on my team went for the ball. My daughter, who is struggling with the 10 foot rims this year, also scored her first basket of the season, which was nice.

 

Sudden hot streaks have huge effects on kids hoops. You can score 6 points in 3 quarters, then score 8 in two minutes. Since most leagues have some kind of mandatory sit-out rules, sometimes you find yourself with nobody on the court who can really score.

 

We do subs once a quarter and I rotate the players without regards to quality. So last week, we had 8 girls, and everyone played 5 of the 8 segments. I assign each girl a number and start the game 1-5. At the first sub break, 6-8 come in and 1 and 2 stay, etc. Takes the thinking out of it and I just try to make sure that each lineup has one of my 2 PGs and one of my 2 Cs.

 

Sis has 4 kids on the roster who at least theoretically can play PG; she makes sure to have two of them in the game at all times.

Really she has no centers on the roster; 2 of the 9 players are slightly taller than the others, so they get to play the post positions.

If somebody else has a 'LeBron,' a big player who can take it coast to coast, they'll be in trouble. But so far nobody's been able to get past their defense.

The extent of her strategic substitutions basically consist of lining up the rotation so that her 'best' lineup is on the court in the 4th quarter.

In the interest of heading off any possible parental grumping about favoritism, she's actually played the twins less than anybody so far.

 

The Starville Rec Basketball League season hit the 1/3 point with Game 3 Saturday.

With most of the other Star family members off on a weekend vacation jaunt to an uncle's cottage, it was up to me to hold down the spectator section in the stands for the Pandas.

Also after a few weeks of fooling around with logistical hurdles, I jumped into the role of Phil Knight and supplied the team with brand new personalized uniforms, Panda Bear Black with a goofy zombie-bear logo to replace the faded red and blue of the league-issued standard shirts. High-quality stuff -- I ironed on the logos and numbers myself.

Arriving early enough to hand over the new unis to StarSis in the hallway before pregame warmups, I sit in the stands in the middle of a bunch of unfamiliar faces -- parents of the opposing team, "Team 3," -- without really identifying myself. I gather Team 3 must be undefeated; the parents make several comments about 'rolling' in their first two games. They have a couple of big strong girls, which could be a problem.

Team 3 kinda walks out on the court for pregame warmups. Then come the Pandas, all in black, dribbling out in a neat 1-8 line, circling the court before breaking into the layup lines. The all-black uniforms and reasonably organized pregame warmup draws gasps from several of the parents: "This team is really serious!" All they're missing is Michael Buffer and a heavy-rock warmup soundtrack.

The first quarter begins with the customary center court lineup to allow everyone to pick out their defensive assignment, and the game is under way. Sis starts both of the twins for the first quarter, and the Pandas are picking off steals by the bunch, but everyone is ice cold once again, and with less than a minute left in the 6-minute first quarter, it's still 0-0. In the final 30 seconds, Sis A grabs a steal, drives for the hoop, and gets fouled going up. She hits both FTs, the first points by either twin for the season. (The team is now 4-6 on the season from the line -- call Ripley.)

With less than 15 seconds in the quarter, Team 3 brings it up to halfcourt (no pressing) but at the midcourt line, Sis B strips it clean, dribbles fast into the frontcourt, pulls up and hits a legitimate 10-foot jumper at the buzzer and a 4-0 lead. The twins will now sit out the second quarter.

But now the cork is popped; Sophie, the 'fireball' semi-ballhog, nails a shot and even feeds Sarah, our tallest and only real 'post' player, for a couple of baskets too. (A good thing; Sarah is a bit of a head case and gets snooty if she's not getting enough shots.) Suddenly it's 10-0 and Sis backs off the defense to inside the 3-point line to avoid RUTS problems. The lead stretches out to 14-0 before Team 3's biggest girl performs a Wes Unseld-style backdown and finally bangs one in. In the final minute of the half they use their size to toss in a couple more rebound shots to close it to 14-6 at the half.

In the third quarter, the twins and Sophie each take turns running the point, with each nailing a couple of shots. Sis A, usually more of a defensive stopper, finishes with career-high 10 while Sis B, Sophie and Sarah get 6 each.

Midway in the third, Addison, the daughter of Sis's assistant-coach dad helper, tumbles to the floor and lies there screaming for probably 30 seconds. Dad picks her up and holds her on his lap for the rest of the quarter; turns out she is barely hurt at all and is OK to return in the 4th quarter.

Amazingly for a kids game, the Pandas fail to get even one inbounds play under the hoop (the typical game features about 10) so they don't get a chance to run their deadly 'Lineup' inbounds play, usually their big points producer. But Sis's halfcourt offense play 'Panda Time,' a 1-2-2 crisscross play, peels people open every time down. Team 3 converts a couple rebounds in the final minute and the final (unofficial) score is 32-14.

In the final 30 seconds, Sis B, the more vocal and assertive of the twins, reaches for a loose ball and catches an elbow in the nose and opens a gusher nosebleed. This raises several piercing screams from the bench, although none from Sis B herself, her twin or mom, either. As it turns out all the StarSis kids are nosebleed-susceptible, something they picked up from their dad's side. They don't hurt very much, but they look like a mess when it happens.

Joking with each other all the way, Sis A helps hold the towel to B's nose as they run to the bathroom to clean up and Sis coaches out the final seconds of the game. A couple minutes later they're out of the bathroom after rinsing the blood out of the spiffy new unis.

Next week comes the intra-school showdown -- the all 3rd-grade Pandas face the 2nd-grade team from the same school. A couple of these girls are big for 2nd graders (the twins have played on their softball team), but according to the twins, in-school scuttlebutt says they're 1-2.

Another bulletin from the twins after church Sunday: one of their best friends from school, a tall(er) girl who has been involved in gymnastics and dancing and has never played before (this season or last) now wants to join the team.

Sis emailed the league supervisor Monday and says she expects no problem, other than her family may be asked to pay a full season's signup fee for only a half-season of games. If she is OK'd to join, that will push the roster to 10 players, which will make Sis's job of evening up PT pretty simple.

 

Man, do I enjoy this. I haven't been on here in a while, but this was the first thread I read tonight, and I'm looking forward to the next update.

 

I actually feel a little disappointed at the lack of drama this season. At least as far as I've heard, there are no off- court controversies or conspiracies brewing.

I suppose somebody could get huffy about the new girl joining the Pandas at midseason, since she will be their tallest player, but she has literally never played basketball before so I doubt she'll instantly become the terror of the league.

 

The lack of off- court intrigue and gossip surrounding the league probably has to do with the somewhat unusual schedule: the league has games scheduled for 9:20, 10:50 and 12:40 while a boys league has games at 8:30, 10 and 11:50, so in both leagues, there are no games back-to-back, making for greatly reduced opportunities for interactions between parents/fans/coaches of different teams.

In most leagues, games are back-to-back, so usually if you show up a half-hour early or stay a half- hour late, you get to see the team you play next week, scoop out how they're doing, listen to parents grumble about other teams, all that stuff.

With the games staggered, almost everybody clears out after their own games, so the only other teams you really know anything about are the teams you actually play.

 

I keep saying I'm going to keep these short; well, this week, I am.

3:00 into the game, it's 10-0. Sis pulls off the high-pressure swarming D, but it's still 22-0 at the end of the quarter (!!?!).

Final is 40-8, even playing hands-in-pocket D the last 3 quarters.

The Pandas' 8th-9th girl surpasses her career scoring total with 12 points.

There will probably be some midweek tidbits, but that's about all you can say for the game.