GL Practice Report

If I haven't already I'm pretty damn close to losing GL and I am fairly despondent about that fact.

GL Practices

Well Wednesday’s practice was not a good one. Some of this was my fault, as while I had a list of things that I wanted to accomplish at the practice, I didn’t have a detailed practice plan laid out to give structure. And I definitely didn’t bring my A-Game in terms of handling them. However, some of it was definitely them. Scott, for instance, was absolutely off the wall. And the fact that only two kids had taken time to watch the video of how our zone break actually worked in action, meant that several of them felt emboldened to whine about how this play didn’t work last year. And it didn’t, but that’s exactly why I decided to take a new teaching approach to it.

Besides work on the zone offense, I also wanted to work on blocking out. And they simply aren’t doing a very good job of it. And that has to be my teaching right there. That part is frustrating to me, because I know that the teaching of fundamentals is a weakness for me. So being able to recognize the problem, work hard to put together the teaching points, and then still not be able to teach it? Ugh.

That leads us to last night. When I get to the gym, I arrive to find us locked out and basically the school is dark. The team arrives, but parents don’t leave as we struggle to find out if we can get in. Finally, I try to send the team home, but they won’t go. Just as they start to straggle off, Jack M sees a janitor through a window. And suddenly we have a practice.

I made sure to come into practice with a strong plan. I really struggled putting together the practice. On the one hand we had a lot of fundamentals that I wanted to go over. On the other hand after yesterday’s poor practice I wanted to make sure we had some fun. We started practice a few minutes late as I had to raise the baskets from 7 feet to 10. I word hard to be in a better mood, and in control, than I was yesterday. And overall it’s a better practice. We worked first on setting screens. During the game I played with them, they went a little overboard in terms of setting screens, but they certainly had the idea down, which was good to see. Following this we did some press break work. After showing them the principles I want to see (set screens off the ball, stay away from the corners, pass the ball, and come to the ball to receive a pass) we did a 3 on 5 press. Towards the end of the drill the offense started doing better. I like this 3 on 5 setup more than the 2 on 3 I’d done with HP last Saturday. I think we’ll do the 3 on 5 with HP this weekend as well. David really wants to just dribble his way out of trouble. Well it wasn’t working. I reminded them how they can literally pass the ball far up the court. Scott, being a baseball person, is likely our one who will do that more than most.

To conclude practice I let them scrimmage as a reward for persevering about practice where I was ready to send them home. To pick teams I had them randomly line up and shoot a free throw. The first six to make it were on Team A, the five others on Team B. David was on the team which missed and moaned about how I picked unfair teams again. I pointed out that I didn’t pick the teams. He still moaned. Anyhow, the scrimmage went fairly well. After initially doing well, we started to bunch up on the court, but I reminded them not to do it and it stopped. Overall fun was had.

I’m really glad we had practice yesterday. I feel like some learning was done and put everyone, or at least me, in better spirits after Wednesday. Saturday we play PL at home. I’ve decided if the team won’t follow through with watching the videos I made at home, I’ll make them watch it before the game, as Tom and Dante, who’d watched the videos, were rattling off my teaching points and really seemed to “get” how the pattern might work. Of course they’re two of the sharper kids to begin with, so that might be why they got it. We’ll see, either way on Sunday, I suppose.

First Practice and Coach's Meeting

First GL Practice

Despite Wednesday not being a particularly busy day for me at school, I was surprisingly focused on work and not waiting with anticipating for the practice. I had become seriously distracted by basketball around GL’s tryouts and I was a little worried that with the start of practices that this distraction would return. Fortunately it didn’t.

As I get to practice I hear Scott and Cameron talking. Scott says how there were a lot of good kids who didn’t make the team so maybe we’ll do alright against other teams. I’m glad to hear him say this. I thought about eavesdropping longer, but decided against it.

We go into the gym and they start shooting around. David and Scott decide to shoot 3 pointers. David then goes on to make a ridiculous 15 of 20 that he shot. As others come in there is quite a bit of 3 point shooting and the team, as I expected after tryouts, definitely have a better shot of making them than they did last year.

Finally it is time for practice to start. Andrew, as expected, is late, while Tom is surprisingly not present at all. Due to the coach’s meeting that night we only have an hour for practice.

And I then proceed to spend a fair amount of time talking. Granted it’s an interactive conversation, but still a lot of my talking. One of the first things I talked about was how last year I hated the 3 point shot. It isn’t because I hate 3 points, it’s because it wasn’t normally a smart shot. I said this year I hate the shot less because some of the time it will be a smart shot. I have a feeling we’re still going to see a few too many threes, now that the restriction isn’t absolute, but I will deal with that in time. I begin to set up the them that I want to focus on this season: We can’t let up for a moment because every game we go into we’re at a disadvantage. I talked about how we’re a town of 8,000 and we’ll be playing towns of 60,000. Talked about the three goals. Laid out the expectations and rules. Lots of good stuff.

And then it was time for the ball busting move. I had sent out the letter with vocabulary and the introduction to the offense and defense. I even asked, when I talked to a few of them on the phone last week, if they had any questions. I got a lot of “nos”. So it was time for the quiz. First part was matching vocab to its definition, second part was asking what our defensive goal is, third part was identifying different spaces on the floor and then ranking those areas from strongest to weakest for us. Finally, there was a Yes/No section about our offensive rules. I’d have never done this with a team I didn’t know, but I think it set the right tone of higher expectations. There was some moaning and groaning, but less than I expected.

Now what was less than ideal? My grading of the quizzes. My answer key was wrong. I had planned on grading them while they did continuous motion but even mucked that up. It was a mess. In the end rather than giving them the feedback that night I simply said I’d return them to them tonight. They will be running half a suicide for each question they got wrong. Their scores were

Justin -1.5
Cameron -12
Scott -8.5
Brian -4.5
Lucas -13
Dante -11
Andrew -5
David -6.5
Jack M -9
Jack P -9.5

I had told them that while we’ll be running individually this time, a week from Thursday there would be a similar but not identical quiz and that time we’ll be running as a team, with a 1 question wrong lee-way. I really expect the scores to go up now that we all know that I’m serious.

After everyone had taken the quiz as I started to grade I had them play a game of Golf. Golf is a shooting drill. Teams line up on the elbows. They take a shot. If the miss the shot they must rebound before it hits the ground. If the ball hits the ground the team gets a point. If a team makes three shots in a row they lose a point. First team to 7 points loses. Our golf winners, Jack M, Jack P, Justin, Lucas, and Scott, will each get to run one less for the permission they’d earned, except for Scott that simply cancels out the suicide he owed me for his conduct at tryouts (something I talked to him about before practice began).

We did a little continuous motion. Brian’s endurance has really improved, even though he was slightly hobbled by his knee (he’d just had his stitches taken out). Justin continues to impress with his solid ball handling skills and good endurance. Not to mention he’ll be the only person not owing a suicide due to his great score on the quiz combined with his Golf victory. There was quite a fair amount of groaning when I said we’d be building up to 15 minutes of continuous motion this year, versus last year’s 10. They only managed to complete 8 last night. We’re doing a much more physically demanding continuous motion tonight so I hope to see them stay at 8 despite the more demanding expectation.

After practice I had a short parent’s meeting. The emphasis was on staying positive and setting up the expectations that the schedule wasn’t going to be as nice as last year owing to GL having limited times for home games. After some quick goodbyes it was off to the coach’s meeting. But not before Brian asked me as we were walking out side, “Do you know who the starters are going to be for our first game?”

Coach’s Meeting

Well there were a lot of games for me to reschedule. And mostly they got done. My organizational system was good for making sure I didn’t double schedule myself (though I’ve already realized I made one mistake) but not as good for allowing to notify the league of the changes I had to make. And boy were their changes. Fortunately, it looks as though we’ll be able to keep all of our home games. This is a big relief as I honestly worried about scheduling some of them. It does mean that we have quite a few Saturdays and a few double header games. There’s going to be a lot of basketball for me in the days to come, that’s for sure.

GL Tryouts Night 3: We Have a Team

Well it was the night to really see who had what. As I started tryouts, promptly at 8:15, all were there except Dante. We immediately kicked off into our 5 on 5 games. First with the fair teams. Andrew showed that he indeed deserved to make the team, as did Cameron. Jon also felt strongly positive about Dante. Tom, by virtue of his have shown up, made the team. Even better is that during one of the second set of games, Tom actually took a shot. He air balled it, but I was just so happy he actually shot the ball, as he’d become loath to do that by the end of last season.

The initial 5 on 5 was nice, but far more instructive were the uneven 5 on 5 teams. The second team made up of Brian, Cameron, Dante, Jack P, and Tom showed that they could run, at least for a bit, with a team of Andrew, David, Justin, Lucas, and Scott. At one point during the game Justin got the ball at the 3 point line, Dante was sticking back giving him space (as he’d been told to do last season by me). Justin decided to take the shot. It was gorgeous and a perfect swoosh. There were murmurs of approval. There was then a great moment (at least from my perspective) when I said, “We don’t settle for that shot after 1 pass”. The murmurs went away.

More interesting was the way Team 3 played. This had 3 players on the very close bubble: Jack M, Jake, and Noah. Noah and Jack M stood out above the others. In fact perhaps the sweetest play of the night was a pass Jack made to Noah cutting through the lane which resulted in Noah making an easy lay-up. Basically those two were competing for the last slot. Each team plays two games, with it being 1st vs 2nd, 3rd vs 4th followed by 2nd vs 4th and 1st vs 3rd.

I then sent them off for a water break and conferred with Jon. He reiterated his support for Cameron and Dante, which I both agreed with. Cameron in particular won me over with his speed on defense. I conferred with people online and with Jon in person and with all of them pushing Dante, and Dante doing much better than Jake, inside (though Jake is likely a better shooter) that suggestion was given and accepted. In the end Jon didn’t seem to have any feel for Jack, but felt that Noah would play well and admitted that he liked the family and that was likely coloring his view. I agreed Noah had a great family. However, by the end of the water break I felt that Jack was the better player and I had made the tough decision in my head.

I gathered everyone around and talked about how now was the time to be supportive of friends who didn’t make the team. How, if you made the team you needed to be committed otherwise you were stealing a place from someone else who could have been a good member of the team. I also reviewed what would happen. I would give them the note card, talk about the strengths and areas they could improve and they could either stay or go at that point.

When this was all said and done, Emily, my boss at the Park District, came into the gym upset with me for having done this. I didn’t back down, and raised the points that everyone found out equally, I told players they could walk outside the gym after they found if they wanted (and explicitly sat by the door, for just this purpose. Overall, I hope I did the right thing by these kids by giving some immediate feedback, but I don’t know. I do know I was respectful to and upbeat about every kid who didn’t make the team. Hopefully that means something, but having to confront ones peers, as they choose to do, couldn’t have been easy. It won’t be an option again for the future, which in some ways is nice, as it takes my unease out of the equation.

Notable Cuts
Kevin – My first cut. He took it really well and set the precedent of staying in the gym. I wished he had gone out and not been able to handle, seemingly, the news so well.

Noah – He could barely hold it together when I told him that he hadn’t made the team. I told him I really did think he had improved tremendously and if he kept working hard and improving that he’d stand a real good chance for next year. I specifically suggested that he play a bunch with his brother so he can play against someone bigger and work on that. I really like Noah, despite my aggravation over his lack of focus at practice. If the final decision had been between Noah and someone who hadn’t been on the team last year, I’d have given the nod to Noah. I really hope he works hard this coming year.

Daniel – This kid did something which surprised me each night at tryouts. He kept hanging on barely and was a surprisingly tough cut. I think in most years he’d have made a GL team. A real nice kid.

Godie – The other player from last year besides Noah to get cut. I think he knew it was coming. Wasn’t a whole lot to it. He’d really have to work hard and improve a bunch just catch up to where players were this year, let alone where they’ll be in a year.

Meet the Team
So while I still feel upset and confused about the cuts, I feel an equal amount of excitement over this year’s team. I think this team is better than HP’s 6B team, and in fact I am going to try and arrange a scrimmage early on just to prove that very point. I think we are, top to bottom, a better team than last year.

Me - Hopefully I’ll be able to be a good enough coach for the talent assembled. My friend Jeff asked me if the key to being a good team was coaching throughout the season or picking the right players at the start. I said I didn’t know. If it’s the latter I think I did a good job. If it’s the former, only time will tell. I will say that I am in a much better place professionally and given my recent success at work, and coaching last year’s basketball and baseball teams I don’t lack for confidence right now. At the same time I worked REALLY hard on preparing for tryouts which I’m pleased about. Confidence and hard work are good things, I would hope, to be in a coach.

Andrew – As I mentioned I started with Kevin, which was done semi randomly, and then went down the list alphabetically telling each player. For some reason, on impulse, when I got to Andrew I asked him what he saw as his strengths and weaknesses. He identified something which I don’t remember and shooting as his strengths. He identified rebounding as a weakness. I think I perhaps did this to get a sense of his personality as he was pretty quiet overall. Anyhow, after I did this and told him he’d made the team (I immediately told all the people who didn’t make it, as I just felt that was right) he let out the biggest sigh of relief. I’ll be interested to see how he fits into the team dynamic but I think I’m going to like him.

Brian – I haven’t really talked much about him, other than that he was a given. He’s a great shooter. His ball handling skills aren’t as great as I would like and he does make passes which get intercepted. The biggest deal is that he had a rough bout of injuries a year ago. Coming into last year’s tryouts he had just gotten a cast off after 4 weeks after breaking his ankle at camp. A week after practices started he broke his other ankle. I don’t think he’d full recovered by March. However, at this years tryouts he was quick, as he was at least years tryouts. Hopefully he’ll stay injury free this season. He is a rather large hot head and can really go off on himself, and others, though more often on himself (or at me because of himself). So there’s that whole side. But he’s also a kid who, if he likes them, will go out of his way for others. I wasn’t surprised he would talk up another player after Night 1, not to tell me how to do my job, but because he was worried that the kid had had a bad tryout. He is just thoughtful, being the only player on the team, for instance, to ask me when my birthday was. On his note card, I had listed two areas for improvement. I told him the first was based completely on last year and that was playing team basketball and that he hadn’t done anything to the contrary during tryouts. Of course that was also true last year which is why I put it on the card anyway. I also talked with him on his tendency to try and play defense in a way that allows him to steal passes, at the risk of leaving his man open. When we did the triangle passing drill on Day 1, I noticed him doing this, just as he had last year. The nice thing about Brian is that I this year I start with a huge amount of built up trust with him. I know on multiple occasions he’s said, when I’m not around, that I’m awesome and his best coach ever. This has, and will, make dealing with him easier than it would have been otherwise.

Cameron – Before I talk about Cameron now, let me post what I said about him last year during tryouts

Cameron is a blob. He doesn’t do anything great, but he doesn’t do anything poorly either.

Well that’s certainly not true any longer. Cameron has tremendous speed. He is, I believe, after Jack P and David our fastest player. Jon pointed out that you can’t teach speed like that and I had to agree. When it was time for Cameron to come up, I told him how glad I was to have seen him on the first day of tryouts cause he was the last player I cut last year. I told him that he’d improved tremendously and congratulations on making the team. My impression is that he’s more of a me first player right now rather than a team player. I am hopeful, and optimistic, that the general team ethos we have will rub off on him.

Dante – First I should say that when I was debating about whether or not to take Dante, I wasn’t fair to him. Of the three areas I was evaluating (athleticism, basketball skill, and attitude) I focused entirely on his short coming, athletic ability, rather than on his tremendous strength of attitude. I’m real glad several people focused on that and pointed it out to me. I mean the kid practically hugged me when I told him he made the team. I commented to him how his post play had really improved and he said he’d gone to a camp for that. I’ll have to ask him what camp that was since it did him a lot of good as he was a bit of a weak player inside last season and I gave him the Dirk Nowitzki award to recognize the fact that he had a pretty good mid-range shot. I told him that the big thing this season was going to be his speed. I wasn’t worried about it on offense, but was concerned about it on defense. He took this area to work on the best of anyone in that you could tell he genuinely wanted to improve on it. I told him he’d have to work hard to earn his minutes and he seemed excited by the challenge.

David – David should be the best player on the team. David should be the best player on either team in many games. He’s fast, can use either hand to dribble penetrate. Guarding him in practice is always a pain. Best of all he’s not selfish in the least. He, more than me, deserves credit for the unselfish ball we played last year. With his example, my encouragement fell on receptive ears. I will say that this tryout format allowed me to do something that I’m not sure I could have ever done otherwise and that is for me to tell David honestly how much I respect not only his basketball ability but also how he works hard to be better. I had never told him that last year. I had done so in other ways, and I think he knew that I knew how special he was but I felt it was important for me to vocalize it to him. His areas for improvement was that he needed to show more often that he was having fun playing basketball and to not feel the weight of the team on his shoulders. I told him how he knows that I don’t run the offense through one person and that already I could see people who had stepped up after he quit starting to defer to him (Lucas and Scott were both guilty of this) and that it didn’t have to be that way, so he could relax and just do his best. Finally, I told him that I was going to ask a lot from his defensively. I said that I was going to have to ask him to guard big guys this year as we have a bunch of people who can guard guards but fewer who can guard inside guys. He nodded his head in understanding. As our talk ended I commented how I was glad he’d come out as I’d heard a rumor that he was trying out for the JCC team and he chuckled in a way that told me that was not a serious consideration. That made me feel good.

Jack M – In the end Jack made the team because he’s short but he knows how to compensate for that as much as possible and he sees the court well. He is also surprisingly good at penetrating going left or right which takes defenders by surprise. I was tough on Jack. I called him over and asked him why he deserved to make the team. He talked about his ball handling and passing. I agreed with both of those areas. I asked him why maybe he wouldn’t make the team. He couldn’t come up with anything. I gave him a moment to think and he still couldn’t come up with anything. So I told him that he was one of the 10 most skilled players out there, but that I was concerned about what things would be like for him this season. How I was concerned that being a gamer the losing would bother him. I told him how he’d really stepped up for us last year when David left the team, but that there is a lot more talent on the team this year and he’d have to earn every minute he played. By this time he was incredibly choked up. I then told him he had made the team. He kind of spit out “I thought I wasn’t going to.” As I’ll talk about when I get to Tom, I didn’t really weigh the three factors equally, but I am glad to know that as a coach, I have enough credibility in Jack’s eye that even though I told him he was one of the 10 most skilled players that I would leave him off the team because of the other factors. I ended with Jack saying that I really had confidence that he’s older and more mature now and so I have confidence that he could handle these issues. I then repeated myself, not for effect, but more out of nervousness. Conciseness would have been better in this situation so it was unfortunate that I didn’t deliver this last point more effectively.

Jack P – It is little known but September 19th besides being International Talk Like a Pirate Day is also “Give Jack a hard time at tryouts” or at least it was in GL. Unlike with Jack M, I told Jack P right off the bat that he’d made the team. I then told him that I’d considered not taking him after Night 2’s tryout. I then explained to him how it was ridiculous for me to even think about that. I told him how his speed and defense were too good to not have on the team, but that he was the lowest percentage shooter last season. And how missed shots drive me nuts. I will be explaining to everyone later how a missed shot is, in my eyes at least, the same as a turnover since we are giving up the ball every time we miss a shot. I told him that this season he was going to either have to improve his shooting percentage or we’d have to find other ways for him to contribute on offense. Jack just shook his head that he understood, but Jack is always a bit of sphinx when I talk seriously with him and so I’m not sure what was going on inside his head. I really wish if I knew it was “Coach is wrong and I’m going to show him” or “Coach is wrong and is an idiot” or “Ok I’ll have to do better” or “I’m awful”. I just don’t know. I do know that Jack was new to GL last school year and he had been a leader in Massachusetts so he’s got some good qualities there, even if he doesn’t yet have a firm place in the social structure here yet.

Justin – Poor Justin was the last kid to go. He actually talked some tonight and I think I’m going to really like him and will be a kid who I’m going to have to shield to some extent from his father. I told him how impressed I was with his shooting ability and that the 3 point shot he did was a beautiful shot. The admiration in my voice was clear. However, I also told him that he could ask people on the team about how I have sat people who have shot beautiful shots like that without working the ball. I also told him that I put on his note card as an area for improvement “It sometimes seems like you’re half a second behind what is happening” but that I wasn’t sure that was true at all. I said that I had detected something in his playing which bothered me but couldn’t place my finger on it yet but that we had a full season to figure it out. I also told him how I was real happy he came out for the team this year as I’d noticed how good he was when we played against him last year. Justin is going to be an incredible tool for us to have on offense. If he, Brian, and David can give us some credibility on the outside, causing other teams to guard us closely there, in particular Justin drawing out the big man, or forcing a team to go to zone, I think we can then use our speed to take advantage of them. The possibilities of Justin excite me.

Lucas – Lucas is a great kid. Where as last season I forced him to play post, he has grown more up than out and I’m not sure he’ll have the bulk to do that this season. I also know that we’re doing a much more sophisticated defense this year and that Lucas is going to struggle with that at first. Not a whole lot to say here as he was an easy pick as he just has a lot of good qualities, but nothing as outstanding (or negative) as some of the others. I had a real hard time, in fact, coming up with an area to work on and ended up putting “Being more of a leader on the floor” as he’s a real quiet kid but one everyone likes. He was, based on his name, the first kid to make the team. I’ll also point out that his father just LOVES me and his mother likes me a lot too. It’s nice having a couple of parents so firmly in your corner.

Scott – Scott told me he played guard a whole bunch at camp over the summer and kind of enjoyed it. I’m sure he did. I’m glad he’s willing to do that. I hope he’s still a scrappy kid as we need kids who can guard big kids. Sadly, like Lucas, he’s grown more up than out, and I don’t know if he’s big enough to play the post anymore. I hope he is though since he’s a tough defender, probably the best on the team after David. The neat thing about Scott right now is that he really doesn’t know just how good he is which makes him so absolutely enjoyable to coach since he’s got so much potential but works so hard.

Tom – Noah was probably a better basketball player during tryouts than Tom. However as I’ve said from the beginning Tom could make the team on attitude alone as long as he showed me SOMETHING. When talking about how I was looking for athleticism, basketball skills, and attitude, I talked extensively about attitude and didn’t really explain athleticism. Yet, when compiling the team I only really considered attitude as a secondary factor. It was ALMOST enough to keep Cameron and Jack off the team but in the end their talent won out. Noah was a mixed picture but overall positive in the attitude category and he didn’t make the team in favor of athleticism and skills. I’d like to think if we didn’t have so much talent I would follow my own dictum better, and in fact advocated that very position to Jon during his 4th grade tryouts for a couple of players. I don’t like it when my rhetoric and actions don’t match up so I will have to really rethink about this in the future, but for now it is simply a disappointment with myself. I think I would be less disappointed with myself if I’d considered this more in the case of Dante. I did think about it in Lucas’s case but he was a nearly automatic player so that doesn’t really count for anything. All that is a long way of saying, I think the world of Tom and he is the only evidence of my not having been completely hallow in what I said. I was quite concerned, as he’s a bit of a perfectionist, that he’d cut himself after he had a poor showing on Day 1. When I talked with Tom, I told him that while his shooting accuracy might not be there he had beautiful form and we’d work on his shooting this season together.

So that’s the team. I really do think they’re more talented than HP’s 6B team and if that’s true we’ve got a real chance of being better than the .500 team I thought we’d be. That said, practices don’t start for a month so in the meantime we’ll be focusing on HP which is meeting weekly.

MP2 Playoff Game

We were feeling good. The team was supremely confident, already asking about the championship. I reminded them we had a very tough, but winnable, game in front of us. I had a brainstorm driving home the day before. We needed more action at point guard when Jack M wasn’t going to be in. I had decided not to start Jack because he had missed the day before (for understandable reasons but still felt I should give the nod to a kid who’d been there). This meant I needed a starting point guard. My brainstorm was simple: I would start Scott at point. There was no reason to believe that he couldn’t do an excellent job.

So when Scott gets there I pull him aside and tell him that I need him to take one for the team and for him to play point. He tells me that he can’t do it. I tell him I’m not going to force him to do it and explain why I think he would be good. He still thinks he can’t. I apply a little more pressure but he stands firm that he can’t do it.

A big plus to this plan is that I wanted to have Dante, Lucas, and Scott all on the floor at the same time. I decide that I still want this threesome on the floor and so I put in Jack P as point, Noah or Gordie (can’t remember) in at the other guard, Lucas at wing, Dante at center and Scott at power forward.

Defensively, I tell Jack that he is to guard the kid the team has nicknamed “temper”. That he is not to worry about playing help defense but is instead not to leave his man. I am pretty confident if we take away him out of the game we’ll be in a far stronger position.

The early part of the game goes well for us. They come out in a zone clearly designed to take away inside shots. But that turns out not to be a problem as we are hot from the outside. Dante gets several open shots and he makes them scoring 6 points quickly for us. We have less luck as we try to force it into Scott inside.

While this cools down it does force them to guard us outside. We continue our patient ways. We are doing a nice half court offense, but I would prefer to be running more.

Overall the game goes well for us until the end of the third quarter. We had been up by 4 when they go on a run even taking a brief lead before we tie it back up to end the quarter. My speech at the end of the quarter is that we just saw the best that they had to offer. This turns out not to be entirely true. I have a good group of five out there, having made sure Tom, Gordie, and Noah all had played at least a quarter, but they still extend their lead. We have, however, taken their best guard out of the game as he just can’t stop crying so that’s something in our favor. The kid really hadn’t done anything wrong, but instead just seems to have cracked under the pressure. It was a shame to see.

Anyhow MP2 does manage to come out and take a lead of four. I call a time out with about 2 minutes to go. I explain we simply need two good possessions to tie the game. And bam we come out of the time out, score quickly, get the ball back after some good defense, and score again. Game is tied. A little seesawing and we then take the lead. We basically trade baskets for the rest of the game and we come out with a win.

These poor kids were crying. It was kind of sad really. They had played a great game, but we managed to squeak out the win. And we deserved it. While the game was close, I felt like we were not only the better team in general but had played better that day. We shook hands and were now on our way to the championship.

Playoffs: NF1

We have our first playoff game against NF1. This team finished in 7th place, despite, I learn, being made up of 3rd graders. I had told the team at our last practice that we would be doing hockey subs for the last time. After that game I told them that I would be making no promises about playing time. We would be having 8 players for the game as Jack M had to play for his AAU team. Brian, who I was convinced was out for the rest of the season? He had been at practice the night before and I could observe no ill effects. His did had told me he would be able to play but I’d been skeptical. Turns out that his dad was very much correct.

The other team got into early foul trouble, but we couldn’t hit any of our shots either at the free throw line or in the field and so the game was pretty close in the first quarter. A great example of this was on our very first possession we took off a minute fifteen from the clock, with multiple shots, passes, rebounds, but not a basket to be found. It was a great offensive possession, with good defense, but shots just weren’t falling.

Going into the second quarter, up by just 1, I hoped we could open up the game some. We do extend our lead to 5 or 6 points, but despite even throwing some presses at them we just can’t seem to get anything going. They’re playing very well.

The third quarter is more of the same. They’re throwing a pretty good trapping 2-1-2 against us that does produce some turnovers. Our biggest problem is at point guard. We simply don’t have anyone who can really make things happen. Brian and Jack P are the ones playing point and both have their pluses and minuses. Brian is simply not as explosive and fast as we’re used to at point and so he can often get snared by their trap. Jack, on the other hand, is certainly fast enough, but his court vision isn’t so great and so he’ll often miss open passes or become too determined to shoot. Having neither David or Jack M, our two main point guards, was quite detrimental to our efforts and prevented us from ever gaining control of the game.

In the fourth quarter we blow the game open. Their best player fouls out about half way into the quarter and we finally hunker down and our shots start to fall. Scott also basically took control of the game, getting the rebound and dribbling down the court, beating everyone, for a lay-up a couple of times. It was just as David used to do. We end up winning by 15. However, despite the fact that we were basically in the lead the whole game, it was quite nerve racking for me as a coach. The kids on the other hand were never too concerned which might explain why it was so close for so long. I can’t really be upset with them for not being too concerned since:
1. I had stressed so much that we were a much better team than they were
2. Their unflappable nature is why we are so good in close games.

The other reason why it was so close was of course the fact that they were playing their best players as much as possible, where as I was playing all of my kids equally. After the game one of their parents commented to me, “You guys really miss [David]” as I’d told them before the game how he’d quit the team. It was quite clear from his tone that he felt like we wouldn’t be able to win it with-out David. While based on what he saw I couldn’t blame him for his assessment, I knew we were a better team than what we’d shown that day.

I also felt much better when I went home and did the numbers. I found out that we shot nearly a season low from the field. This meant that if our shots had dropped at a more typical rate we’d have won this game far before the fourth quarter.

Going into Sunday we were going to play MP2 and then (hopefully) the winner of the MP1-LS game. I felt very good about our chances and knew that it would be two tough games, but felt that the championship was in reach.

My day was not done, however. The coach of the 5th and 6th grade teams had games which conflicted and so I had been drafted to coach the 6th grade team until he could get to the game. I was actually more nervous about this game than my own as I’d only known this team from one practice of an hour and a half. I’m proud to report that when I turned over the game in the 3rd quarter the team was up by 5 to a team that previously defeated them by 30. They would later go on to lose by 4, and while it’d have happened no matter who was coaching it sure did make me look good :).

Snow Day

Well it’s a snow day here and that means no practice tonight. Love it as a teacher, hate it as a coach. So this means we are once again losing practice time. It really is adding up at this point and I grow very concerned about our longer term prospects.

The big question, then, is who to start, and what kind of rotation I want to do, for Sunday’s game. Jack M, Jack P, Scott, Tom, Dante, and David all can make a legitimate case for starting. Of that group, in some ways I want to bring Jack P off the bench, since he’s the most versatile of that group after David, who I am obviously going to start. But I still think Jack could be our third best overall player. How do you sit your third best overall player?

If, instead, I went based off of skill that would lead to Tom sitting. However, I don’t like how that leaves us for subs. Brian and Lucas are going to each see minimal playing time, most likely 3 or 4 minutes in each half. I basically want Lucas playing the 4 position, for reasons previously mentioned. Brian, is an unknown. Before his injury I’d had him penciled in as a starter. Now, besides not having a real feel for how I want things done (not the biggest minus considering we play just a step above organized chaos) , he’s still getting his feel for running, jumping, shooting, etc back. The kid has spent, essentially, the last 3 months with a broken ankle on one of his feet. It’s got to have an effect on his body if not his psyche.

With Noah not being there, that leaves Gordie and one other player as my main substitutes and Gordie is essentially only good in the guard positions. Despite the fact that the 3 spot is nearly a guard on our team, he doesn’t seem so comfortable with it. The problem is that at some point, Dante is going to need to rest. When he does I will need a center and that leaves me two choices, basically, Jack P and David. Both have their pluses and minuses. Jack P is serviceable there, but since he’s inside more he ends up with higher percentage shots (he took a whole lot of shots at our last game). David can man the position better, but then again he can do most things better and so limiting his touches of the ball seems counter productive. Perhaps I’m over thinking the whole thing, as if they’re doing the offense right, which they won’t, even the center is on or near the perimeter a fair amount.

One could make an argument that having David, as point guard, Tom, as the other guard, some combination of Scott and Jack P as forwards, and Dante as center is our best unit. In fact, I would be willing to make that argument. However, I just can’t bring myself to not start Jack M. First, he earned it by how well he played last week. Second, considering how well he played last week, it would have an especially damaging effect on a player who is somewhat delicate to begin with. So Jack gets the start. Further, having Jack bring the ball up means Jack is less likely to take a silly shot when he gets the ball, so it makes sense for him to play point, rather than David who is our best point guard.

As I would like to use Tom more as a guard and less as a 3, I think Scott will get the start as the three, Jack as the 4, and Dante as the five. As I like to remind the team, it’s a long season so I will have time to play around with that. This is one of those times that writing things down has helped to clarify my thoughts. And while it’s perhaps not my favorite starting five, I do think it will be our best starting five.

Tryouts

I was hoping to get this typed up before I went to tryouts today, but it was not to be. The last two days have been very informative. I really feel like good grasp of most of these kid’s skills. This is certainly a change from the first day. So that part is good. The part that is bad? Right now I have a basketball team of 9 players. I have two players on the cusp and I could end up taking one or both of them and don’t know which it’ll be.

Yesterday we did a few drills. We started with a 3 on 2, 2 on 1 weave drill. Then we went to zig-zag dribbling. They were always to use the hand they were dribbling towards, so left if going left, and right if going right. I was actually very impressed overall with how well many of these kids were able to dribble with both of their hands. However, I decided, upon further reflection, that the width we were doing was too small. We ended up repeating this today first thing so that we could use the full court before the 5th graders arrived. I was able to see a lot more distinctions when we did it tonight.

We also did several passing drills with two man teams doing a slide with chest and overhead passes, along with a jogging bounce pass back and forth. We also did a 45 second, how many 6-9 foot jump shots can you make. We ended with some 3 on 3 games. The 3 on 3 games? Disaster. I learned very little worthwhile. I feel like we did something else, but it is forgotten at this point.

Coming out of day 2 a huge burden was taken off my shoulders. All three of the H triplets were going to make the team. Brian, our friend with the broken ankle, is a fairly good guard. I really don’t like his attitude, but it is not so bad as to be a major problem. Scott seems like he’s going to be a good forward. I still have no clue where I’m going to play David, who was once again the best player on the court. I mean he’s likely the best ball handler we have, but he’s also one of the taller players, on a team that is fairly short. Anyhow, this is the sort of problem that I like to have, and I have a bit to figure things out.

Also showing real promise was Dante. He’s one of the two tallest kids out there, besides Asher (who was the kid who reminded me of me in 4th grade). Dante showed good to very good abilities to dribble, shoot, and rebound. He’s exactly the sort of center I had hoped to have: A threat (as much as any of them are) from the outside and able to handle the ball. Fits into the motion offense I expected to run.

Let me diverge from the tryouts here for a second. I went into tryouts with an open mind. I haven’t really choreographed what I expected the offense or defense to be because I wanted to see their skills first. But, as I knew the community, they were what I expected. Mostly a group of short kids. Their dribbling skills were better than I expected and their shooting about what I thought it would be. Anyhow, my plan is to spread the floor, as even tall 4th graders don’t tend to be huge, and teach them how to move without the ball in order to create inside shots. Most of these kids cannot shoot, really, beyond 12, and for many 10 foot is the outer range of where they should be shooting.

Anyhow, so Dante makes the team. Leaving the gym that night I knew that we had a team of 5:
The Hs, Dante, and Jack P. Jack P is another taller kid with good dribbling and shooting skills. He’s a step below Dante in height, and could see some limited time at Center, but will more likely be seeing time in the 3 and 4 spots.

I went home and entered the numbers for both the objective and subjective drills. Came up with a weighted and un-weighted formula to rank them with. Based on that analysis I got two more players; both surprised me at the time as they had not really made an impression, but based on observations tonight both definitely deserved it. Noah was one of them. A shooting/point guard, even possibly a small forward, he’s got a great first step for a penetrating dribble and is a very accurate lay-up shooter. The other player to make it was Jack M. Interestingly, I had a fairly hard time telling Noah and Jack apart for a bit as they both have about the same skin tone and have the same hair cut. I do think I have it down now, though. Anyhow, Jack did very well defensively and showed good ability to dribble with both hands. He’ll be a point/shooting guard for us.

That gave me 7 players who I knew would make the team. I also had ruled out two. Asher was one of them. He actually turned out to be a great rebounder, but really all the other parts of his game are just terrible. My decision was reaffirmed when I learned before tryouts tonight that he’s actually had extensive basketball training. Hence the reason why he had surprised me by knowing of the “hot shots” drill. For a kid who has had all the background he’s had, his fundamentals are just appalling. I thought he was a kid who might just need a thousand lay-ups so he could not look like an octopus when he shoots. But that likely is wrong. He just doesn’t have it. Oh well. Asher also drove me nuts since he took every opportunity he could to sit down. I asked him if he was tired, and he said no. I let him know that he shouldn’t sit down then. Anyhow Asher was out.

Also out was Matt. Matt was one of only two kids, along with Miles not to attend day 2. Matt was slow and unskilled. No real getting around it. I actually wondered if he’d even show up today. He did and my limited observations only more than confirmed what I thought.

That left 7 kids who I was undecided about:
Miles
Tom
Nick
Cameron
David R
Lucas
Gordie

Tom was a virtual lock to make the team. The real problem was that he was a noticeable step below some other kids at some important skills for both the 1 and 2 positions, which were the spots he seemed most comfortable at. He did have good hustle and a good sense of how to move on the court. Considering the offense I want to run this latter trait was what made him a virtual lock to make the team. In fact were it not for his thoroughly mediocre shooting scores I’d like have already put him on the team.

Nick was nearly put on the cut list, but I decided to leave him off. However, he did not come tonight and as such his performance did not improve, making him an easy cut. He did have fairly good defensive skills, though not substantially better than several other players. This means this postive was more than negated by his terrible offensive skills. He wasn’t a particularly great hustler either. He also sucked his shirts. I know this last thing might seem inconsequential but it was actually a fairly big minus in my book. I want my players to play fearlessly out there. That was one way I made basketball teams, because I was (and am) fearless on the court. I’m not afraid to take a charge or set a hard pick or dive for the loose ball. Anyhow, I want fearless players and a kid who sucks his shirt at age 9 is not a fearless kid..

Then there is Cameron. Cameron is a blob. He doesn’t do anything great, but he doesn’t do anything poorly either. More about Cameron later.

David R was the kid who yesterday I just loved his attitude. I continued to love his attitude. I went into tonight looking for something, anything, to justify putting him on the team.

Lucas, was a kid who I didn’t have much of a sense for. His weighted scores, which gave more weight to the objective things we’d done, were so-so.

Finally there was Gordie. Gordie showed moments of skill. However, I knew heading into the day that he’d be a borderline player, with me not wanting to take him. The reason for this was that he was CONSTANTLY not paying attention or needing me to call him over or asking him not to shoot a basket while some other kid was doing his shooting drill. Before tryouts started today the 5th/6th grade coach asked me about him. I told him that he was borderline leaning towards no. The coach explained that he knew the family well and had coached his brother on a couple of teams, and that the brother had the same personality. Good to know it runs in the family.

Miles had not impressed me during the first night’s tryout. However, he was the kid who I first met who had a good spirit. I thought that perhaps there was more that he was capable of, that I simply hadn’t seen. Before tryouts tonight I met his father. His father has an unbelievable background, having founded the 4th grade travel team, done all sorts of JCC sports, founded, and is currently president of, a small fry team. I really liked the guy. It gave me renewed hope that Miles would have more to show me.

Several players had told me they’d be a minute or two late. So when the opportunity arose with 4 of us there to play a game of knockout, I took it. I won. We then played two more games, with more kids joining in each time, which I also won. I’m sure it’ll be a big relief to you to know that I could beat a bunch of 9 year olds. The players all really enjoyed it though, which was good. I let the kids play a fourth game, which only got about ¾ finished before we started tryouts.

As I mentioned we started with full court zig-zag dribbling. After doing full court once we did to half court and back as the 5th graders were starting to trickle in. Next we played a game of “Man in the Middle”. The kids were about 10 feet apart. Person in the middle. The two people on the outside could throw chest or bounce passes to their partner while the man in the middle tried to intercept. This did not turn out nearly as well I had hoped and I ended up speeding it up, though I did get to see a couple of kids do the sort of passes I wanted to see.

My goal tonight was to focus on 6 kids who I didn’t know about. By the end of man in the middle, and based on seeing him play lightening, I knew that Miles, bless his heart, just didn’t have what it took and neither did David R. I really liked both kids, but a travel basketball team just is not the right place for them right now. In happier news, Lucas had impressed me during knockout and continued to impress me during the first few drills and moved into the likely make it category.

Next we divided into 3 teams of 4, as there were only 12 players there. Besides Nick, the H triplets were not there (which was not unexpected). I tried to put 1 center person (which ended up being Asher, Dante, and Lucas), 1 forward (Jack M, Tom, as if he could play forward his playing time would be greatly increased, and Cameron), and 2 guards. I also tried to roughly balance the teams talent wise. I also told the kids who to match up against, though I did not state what position I’d put them at.

The scrimmage proved to be quite informative, in the confirm what I already know sense. Asher, for instance, not only can’t shoot but LOVES to shoot. To the great annoyance of his team mates. Noah impressed me with his ability to penetrate. Lucas tried to play guard until I told him “if you make the team you will be at forward or center, so play there”. He didn’t like it but gave the position his best, which was nice to see. He did a nice enough job. It became clear that Tom could not play forward. That’s a shame as it greatly reduces his utility since I have enough guards, even if I use the 3 as a semi-guard, as is likely. He did, however, again show his ability to move around without the ball to great effect.

More frustrating was Gordie who proved an ability to shoot quite well and also played better defense than I’d seen previously. The kid is also short, even for this team, something I haven’t mentioned before. His annoying traits were still present, though more restrained tonight. In our later drills he would once again prove quite the adept shooter.

Cameron once again did nothing poorly, but neither nothing outstandingly well. This would be the theme with his running as well, which was our next part.

Using two groups I had them do a variety of drills which required them to run/dribble to half court, and back. Miles actually showed a surprising amount of speed, but his control was poor and his left hand weak, so no loss there. After doing the running, I immediately put them back in their three groups and had them each shoot three free throws. Cameron actually did fairly well here.

Then it was time for “half court suicides”. A suicide, for those who don’t know, is where a player runs from under the basket, to the free throw line, back to under the basket, to half court, back, to the opposite side free throw line, back, and to other the other basket and back. The drill is grueling, but is a staple of basketball training because it is good conditioning and also gives players a chance to work on change of directions, again an important skill. Anyhow, a half court versions are considerably less difficult. Of course they ended up running 4 variations which again was somewhat tiring. They did have a short break in between runs as we had two groups, but the players did tire. Then it was another three free throws. The shooting percentage, not surprisingly, dropped off for the second three. I then gave them a water break.

One important note: Dante clearly was not hustling during this. I got on him and still he did not hustle. Later I would learn there was a reasonable explanation for this.

We next did a drill where there is a player who passes in to someone who posts up. That player is being guarded. I only allowed the poster, as I called him, to take one shot. I also stated that there could be no fade aways. It was interesting seeing who turned inside, and who turned outside. The first 5 kids, meaning nearly half, turned outside, until Miles turned inside and became only the second player to actually make the basket. We ran through this twice.

Finally, we ended by doing left handed lay-ups, dribble from the right side to take a shot from about 12 feet on the left side, right handed lay-ups, and doing the jump shot with dribble from left to right.

I gathered everyone around, thanked them for another great day of try outs and explained how the team would be posted. I was asked what days practices were and I said they were currently scheduled on Mondays and Wednesdays. Dante groaned. Turns out he plays travel soccer year round and those are the days they practice and there was even some overlap in the time. This was bad news, as Dante was making the team no doubt. It means I need to talk to Emily, my Park District contact, about changing that Wednesday practice, as Mondays are the best day of the week for me scheduling wise.

Anyhow, I went home. Immediately, of the six I crossed off Miles, Matt, Nick, and David R. Tom and Lucas made the cut. That leaves me with 9 players and only Cameron and Gordie left to make a decision about. Of the two, Gordie is more talented, no doubt. But the question is: is he coachable? Then there is Cameron. His skills aren’t as present, but I know he’ll work hard. Of course he doesn’t bring anything to the team dynamic and while not being a minus is good, being a nothing, is well, nothing. And Gordie at least will have moments where he’d likely add something good.

I think in the end I’m going to take Gordie and not Cameron, though I could take both if I wanted since 11 is still manageable and gives a little more breathing room for sickness/injury. Of course, if everyone is there it makes for an incredibly awkward number to practice with. So that remains the last decision to make. I will likely make it by the time I wake up tomorrow. And truth be told it’ll likely be Gordie and not Cameron. But time will tell.

Well I did not get my promised weekend post in. But I’m back again.

Yesterday was the first day of try-outs. The structure, once again, is three days of an hour and a quarter each day. Players must attend two days. Yesterday was the first day of tryouts. In the end I had 16 players show up. The sixth grade tryouts, which were basically running concurrently to ours, had 30. I would have, honestly, thought these numbers reversed as kids would be more likely to try out when they’re younger and have never been rejected from a travel team before.

Rather than going 75 minutes, we only went 50 since I had to go to my school’s open house. So I did lose some considerable time looking at these players. Things also suffered since I was new at this. And running tryouts by yourself? It’s hard. Having a second pair of eyes would have been incredible as there wouldn’t have been nearly the same amount of downtime and I think the tryout would have run smoother. Let’s review what happened.

I pull up to the school at the same time as another car. As I am getting out my car (and taking off my suit jacket) I hear a dad talking to his son in the next car. It was really cute hearing the dad give his son advice. We end up walking the first couple of steps together and I smile at him and say that his dad was offering good advice. Kid seems nice enough. I later learn that his name is, I believe, Miles. (A note on names: In my little league dynasty I used initials as I do want to protect these kid’s right to privacy. I am simply going to use first names, sometimes with last initials, for this dynasty as I think using initials made the kids seem less kidlike and had a negative effect on the overall feel of the dynasty).

As I go to the gym, I meet a guy who works for the Park District. I also meet a step mother of triplets who’s very concerned. She tells me that one of her step-sons, whose name is Brian, just had an ankle cast taken off. She doesn’t think there will be any effects, but wants me to know. I smile and write down his name so it seems like I’m being responsive. I do feel for the kid, but also am not a psychic. If this kid is still recovering from the brake, as he no doubt is, and I will not be able to see his full skills, it will be held against him. I will try and estimate when he is being limited, but what can ya really do?

I started off by giving a short welcoming speech. I basically cribbed it from a website I found. It talked about working hard, listening, and not being nervous. I even did something I do for my students before a test and told a corny joke before we got started to try and loosen them up. Worked for some, and not so for others.

For our first drill, I divided them up into two groups. As I stated earlier, we are sharing a full size gym with the sixth grade team, so we used the side to side baskets for most of what we did. For the first drill, they are to rebound, outlet to me, run down to the other side, receive a pass, and make a lay-up. We do this one time and then the second time I give them a score from 1-5. Everyone ended up receiving a grade of between 3 and 5, including .5 increments. I am used to being handed a team. In that situation I’ve never bothered to rate my players, since they’re my players, and simply did the best I could working with them. So I expect, and hope, that my ability to instantly judge minute differences in skill. I mean it also doesn’t help that these are all 9 year olds and so many of them ARE close together in skill. As we run this drill, some kids are clearly worse than others. Of course, since I am doing the throw, some throws are better than others and so I get to see some kids adjust well and others have trouble. But it’s good information all around.

Following this we did 30 second lay-up contests from both sides. Players were encouraged to shoot with the right hand from the right side and the left hand from the left side, though some players needed more encouragement during the actual process. This took about a minute a player as it was 30 seconds to do the actual shooting, and then another 30 for me to record the scores and make sure the next two players were ready to go. It was at this point I thought of putting names with numbers so that also took some time. Players were instructed to count the number of baskets made by people at their basket. This started off strong, but by the end only a couple of kids were doing it. Notes were made about who was still doing the counting.

We then did a dribbing/defense drill. Players had to zig-zag dribble while another player defended. I was really just looking for footwork and body posture so I had the defenders hold their hands behind their back. Unfortunately, I did not make as careful notes during this drill as I’d have liked.

Finally, we ended with a semi-abridged version of lightening. Abridged because the time was up and I needed to go. This was actually helpful in that I could see them in a semi pressure situation not to mention getting a further sense of their rebounding and lay-up skills not to mention a beginning sense of their free throw abilities.

So what about the players? Well let’s start with the triplet’s, who I will refer to as the H triplets. One of the triplets, David (I think), was by far the best player out there. No one else was close. During the dribbling drill I switched his partner twice just because I wasn’t getting anything useful from his partner because he was so dominating. The kid could not make another shot the rest of tryouts and he’d make the team.

The problem comes with his brothers. Brian, of broken ankle fame, has an attitude that rubs me the wrong way. As for his skills, they are pretty middle of the road. He claimed not to be bothered by the ankle, but I dunno. As for the third brother, Scott, he was pretty middle of the road as well. The whole triplet thing complicates matters. Clearly, David is making the team. But then what to do about the other two? This is not a charity, but I do not want to start the season by making a politically intemperate move with the parents. I see no real way I could take two of the three and not the third, unless the third was noticeably worse than other players. One of the three? Seems more doable. But I dunno. I hate triplets.

Most of the other kids didn’t make a huge impression on me one way or another. Miles, who I think is a good kid, doesn’t seem to have the talent. Then there is the case of David 2. David 2 did every little thing asked of him, but displayed no real talent I could find. I’m looking for a reason to take the kid, as kids like that can help glue a team together, but right now his athleticism doesn’t seem to warrant his making the team. I have marked down 6 kids who I need to see a little more of, but I think would be likely candidates.

There is also the case of Asher. Asher, unless he blows my socks off, is one of two kids who I just can’t see making the team. And I feel bad for the kid, because he reminds me of me at the age. Tall and with no real control of his limbs who tries hard. He could benefit from some instruction, which I’m guessing he’s never really gotten, and lots of practice. I will be finding a way to make sure he hears about the lots of practice part at some point. But, again, Asher is not likely to make the team.

So heading into Day 2 I’ve got perhaps ¾ of a basketball team. Tonight my plan is to start with zig-zag dribbling, without a defender, and asking the dribbler to switch hands each time. We’re then likely to do a 3 on 2, 2 on 1 drill, emphasizing passing. We’ll do a “hot shots” drill where there are three different stations at each basket (we’re going to use all three tonight to speed this up) and they need to make as many jump shots as possible in a minute. We’ll conclude with some 3 on 3 or 4 on 4 depending on how many kids show up.

I should have another update for you tomorrow on how day 2 went.