Team Overview

It’s been a while since I’ve updated simply because with Thanksgiving we’ve not had a game in a while. We have a game tomorrow, but I thought that it would be a good chance to go kind of give a state of the team a third of the way through the season, especially because I’ve been briefer in my write-ups to date.
In alphabetical order:

Alex: The kid still hasn’t figure out how to make a shot in a game. He does it practice, in game situations. In competitive situations. In rough situations. But can’t come through in a game. That’s OK, because he’s been solid defensively and has consistently rebounded. Rebounding has been a team weakness, though I’ve started incorporating a simple throw the ball up against the backboard for the next person to rebound into our pregame warm-up and that seems to have led to some better results.

Austin: He’s definitely more comfortable not being the focal point of the team, AKA not the PG. However, when Josh was gone for a weekend he stepped into the role and preformed adequately. He does a particularly good job of being willing to pass the ball up the court. He’s averaging over 3 assists a game, which is a lot considering our team averages 30 points a game. Additionally, in our last three games (two of them where he was playing point) he should have had at least 2 more assists each game if a player hadn’t missed a wide open lay-up from a pass of his.

Grant: He is pretty consistently below average across the board in skills. He’s probably #9 on our depth chart in terms of talent. He is, however, a great member of the team in terms of attitude and humor.

Josh: Against the large KW team we played we definitely missed his ball handling, which is funny considering he’s the 2nd shortest kid on our team. However, the kid hasn’t been at practice, in forever. As in not since November 17th. When his mom called me to tell me he wouldn’t be there Friday (he was originally supposed to be there Monday but his plane was delayed) she said he was quite worried about playing time. I didn’t reassure her. Overall our team is definitely better with him than without him, but with his not having played for so long I have no idea what kind of physical condition he’s in.

Leo: The kid gives his all that’s for sure. He is on the floor an amazing amount of the time diving after balls. He came through huge against KW which was great to see. He grew a lot last season and perhaps we’ll see him continue to grow this season into a good player.

Mason: He’s made nearly every shot he’s taken this season, which is great. Most games he is a bit of a nothing on the court. He plays hard and works hard, so he’s definitely learning and growing. However, as the shortest and scrawniest kid on the team he’s got to learn how to play bigger than his size and how to make sure bigger and stronger kids. I’ve been working with him, giving some tips, and hopefully they work. Nice story though. He’s also playing in house league and said he started telling me about the first practice: “Everyone just stands around on our offense. The point guard gets a screen from the center and either shoots or passes to the center. But everyone else just kind of does nothing. You’re such a better coach.” I explained that considering I was being paid to coach I should be better. One advantage though I hadn’t really thought of with the Read and React is that even if a kid isn’t getting a lot of touches they probably still feel involved because they’re always moving and doing something that has value.

Matthew: Our smartest player. As an example, we were doing “Bull in the Ring” where one player is in the post and has to receive passes from his teammates on the perimeter, all while being defended 1 on 1. His score, thanks to smart movement, was nearly half his teams points. Had an unfortunate injury which kept him out our past three games. But he’s fully recovered now. While he doesn’t add much on offense, he is a tenacious defender, especially for his size.

Michael: He leads the team in steals and is able to convert many of those steals into fast breaks, which leads to points, and so he is also our team’s leading scorer. He is, along with Josh and Alex, one of 3 players who is clearly a step above the others.

Quentin: The kid has no jump shot. Like none at all. Every shot is a set shot. He’s a very high percentage shooter though. If he can learn to shoot a lay-up I’ll have done some good coaching this season. Sadly his defense is weak so he’s more of an end of the bench sort of guy.

Seth: His shooting percentage is abysmal. If he learns to keep his head up when he moves his shooting percentage will rise. This is a funny criticism, because he’s the kid most likely to pass it way up the court on a fast break. He’s been a hard worker and I think has definitely improved so far this season.

Overall we’re 4-1 and tied for first place with WM (3-0), the team who beat us. We’re also the only team who has played more than 3 games. Every team we’ve beaten has a losing record, as does our opponent tomorrow, so it’s really hard to tell if we’ve just beaten a bunch of bad teams and are a good team, have beaten a bunch of bad teams and are an average team, or have beaten some not so bad teams and are a good team. Our offense is looking better and better every week which is good. Our defense hasn’t progressed at quite the same speed and will be more of a focus as our offense sets to go into refinement mode rather than learning mode.

I think my coaching overall has been solid. I haven’t done as much shooting instruction or breaking down and reinforcing individual fundamentals as I would like, which is bad. I need to recommit myself to those things because they’re important and deserve time. I think I’ve handled the players well while also not making myself obsessed. Hopefully more good things will come.

Practice Report

Week two of practices is in the books. Overall, I was pleased with my coaching this week, compared to last week’s so-so job. That said, I really hope that the team we play isn’t with the same coach (so they’re starting from scratch like I am) and not have a year’s worth of common experiences up on us. While the group understands our offense in theory, in practice, not nearly as much. And their defense is aggressive, which I like, but very unrefined meaning if they’re more athletic than we are, we could be in real trouble.

Anyhow, Monday I gave my “quiz” based on the mailing I had sent out before the season started. The results? Not pretty. I gave virtually the same quiz last year, but with one more section (as I had taken out offensive rules, knowing that this would be our early season focus and not really knowing what would be useful to put in there). And the team last year got, as I recall, about as many questions wrong, with 2 more players answering and 1 less section. It was the first time that the team hadn’t impressed me. For every 4 questions they got wrong, it was worth 1 suicide, though every player was allowed 1 “free” wrong answer. Josh, bless his injured foot, actually got every question right. This left them with 13 suicides to run over the course of practice. In reality they ran only 10.5 which was still a bunch. This was about tone setting as much as anything. Reading over some of the posts from last year at this time, it definitely seems like this team is easier to coach than what I had last year. Whether this is because of the kids, or me (I resolved to start tough) or a combo, I can’t say.

Other events at the practice, including running a fast break drill where I emphasized offensive spacing. We also did some work on our offense, introducing passing for the first time. The rule for passing, which is cut to the basket, is simple. There is a whole other layer of passing, which I didn’t introduce. Just getting the simplest of the simple down is our goal for now.

At Tuesday’s one hour practice, I actually let them scrimmage for half an hour. First we did some fundamental work and I taught them 3 inbounds plays, though two are really just varations on each other. All this was done in the first 15 minutes of practice. I was quite pleased with how effectively I ran that time. Next we did some Animal Rebounding. They were happy to be doing the drill which is always nice to see.

In order to have 10 people I brought in Leonardo’s brother, Rodrigo, who is in 6th grade and has tried out (and been cut) the last two years. I did a lot of stopping in order to remind them of various points. There was a lot of extra movement, people were moving cause they felt like it rather than in response to the ball handler, thus defeating the purpose “Read and React”. In good news there was one sweet play where Matthew drove, drawing the defense, and then hit Quentin, who was moving like he should, with a pass resulting in an easy lay-up.

I also did something of debatable wisdom. While practicing the offense we had practiced it as a “5 out” meaning all five players start off outside the 3 point arc. During the scrimmage I made them practice as a 4 out 1 in, meaning we would have 1 player, the Center, who would stay closer to the basket. In the long run we need to run the 4 out 1 in, because Alec, our starting center, is one of our biggest strengths. And to execute on the strengths we need him in the post. Of course not really having practiced this formation, which has its own slightly different spacing, is where the questionable aspect comes in. I think while Alec is in on Sunday we’ll mostly play 4 out 1 in, while playing 5 out, most of the rest of the time.

Overall I think we’re in OK shape. Just about any result would not surprise me, from blow out defeat to solid victory. My big concern is point guard, where we’re weak for the game due to some bad circumstances. Taking a look at our roster here’s my impression heading into the first game:

Alec: Disappeared on offense in our scrimmage. That’s not good. I don’t know if it was the players he was playing with, as Rodrigo who he was matched up against got plenty of looks, him, or the fact that he was being guarded by a kid taller and stronger than him. Rodrigo is very raw and was no doubt fouling and such, which frustrated him. I handled his frustration in a “deal with the problem rather than whining” sort of way which is very atypical for me, and in retrospect not exactly the tone I should have used, even if the message was right. If we win, I suspect it’s going to be on his back.

Austin: He’s going to be our starting point guard. His being a lefty should throw off their defense somewhat since it means he’ll go left rather than right. Of course he doesn’t have too much of a right so after that initial plus, the other team could do some real damage forcing him left. The team nominated him as the best shooter, when I offered to let them out of some suicides if someone could make a basket, which I found interesting and not something I’d have pegged him for. He’s salt of the earth nice, a kid with a near constant smile on his face.

Grant: Always thanks me for my time. He seemed to do well with the offense until it was a game and then he promptly started to forget to execute it. I still like his court sense, but he’s going to have to figure out how to make it work with-in the structure. His skills are pretty unremarkable to this point.

Josh: I hope he recovers soon. His commitment to the team, even when injured, has been fantastic. He’s, by his own admission, not much of a shooter. But he will be our starting PG when he is healthy, since he’s able to drive and pass. I don’t need shooters. I need people who can help us get open baskets.

Leonardo: He’s out of shape, I think, rather than lazy. I still see the potential there, especially on defense. My goal, and I have no clue how successful I am going to be with implementing this, is to use him for short rotations, 2 minutes or so rather than 4 or so. Hopefully not less playing time, just different playing time. I think this will allow him to be successful, especially on defense, which is my A #1 area of concern. I plan on using him as our primary back-up to Alec, so the short stints could be a good thing as it would allow me to rest Alec as well.

Mason: I’m not sure if I noted this previously, but he’s the only kid on the team who wasn’t on the team last year. He’s fast and has endurance. Monday as we were running our last suicides, he was basically the fastest kid on the court for the first suicide, and he was BY FAR, the fastest kid on the court for the last one. He’s pretty insecure about himself, so I’ve been working hard to give him some legitimate confidence. That said he made a lot mistakes playing PG in our scrimmage. He had a tendency to pick up his trouble when pressure was first starting so that he wouldn’t get the ball stolen from him. This caused more trouble than good. He came up to me after practice and asked how he did. I had him tell me how he thought he did and then gave him the general pointer, don’t pick up your dribble, as well as some advice about how to avoid doing it (using his body to protect the ball, a skill he definitely has in the abstract).

Michael: Sadly Michael won’t be at our game Sunday, most likely. He really wants to be there, and in theory he should be able, but as I’ve told him and his parents, it’s just fine if he’s not there. I’d want him there since he’d be my preference for starting PG with Josh out. His natural spot is as a 3. The kid thinks very highly of himself, almost to the point of arrogance, but he also understands that arrogance doesn’t help the team so he tries saying the right things. It’s a weird combination. I’m trying an experiment where the kids can nominate a player based on hard work and improvement at practice and to my surprise he got 3 votes, the most of any kid (Alec and Matthew got two, Mason, Grant, and Austin 1).

Matthew: He doesn’t look pretty the way he plays, but he gets stuff done. I’m certainly going to work on improving his fundamentals, but I can’t argue with results. Based on the fact that I think he understands the offense the best of anyone at this point, I will be trying him out at PG.

Quentin: The kid most likely to come out of the game for taking a silly shot. He thinks he has a much better jumper than he has. He’ll also take a shot if he can. I noticed the same tendency last year. Taking bad shots is one of the few things I will take a kid out of a game for doing. I don’t think he’s quite bought into me or my way of doing things yet. Hopefully I’ll win him over, especially when we start working on jump shots. If I can help him there, that should go a long way to helping him, not only because he’ll annoy me less, but also because it should increase his buy-in.

Seth: I think I want him to be better than he is. I want him to be an athletic 4, as he’s got a pretty good outside jumper and he’s got the size to be a big. Right now, however, he’s kind of soft. Oh and he’s also lacking some of the athleticism one would need to be an athletic 4. Still a starter at the moment. He will also likely see some time at 5.

The good news is that the drop-off in talent from 1 to 10 isn’t steep. Of course that can be the bad news as well, and interestingly enough I do perceive a definite split in talent from our top 3 (Alec, Josh, Michael) and the other 7, but even that isn’t all that huge.

One final note. One of my goals this season is to remain more sane as a coach. I have worried that this means I won’t put in the effort needed to be successful. I am proud to say that when I’ve needed to be focused on basketball I’ve been focused on basketball. Otherwise I’ve put it aside. If I maintain my sanity I will be a better coach.

Tryouts Day 3

Well day 3 of tryouts is in the books and my decision has gotten harder. 7 o’clock rolls around and we have 8 players. Players were not exactly early to arrive so at first I was hoping for six, so we could do 3 on 3. Just what I was expecting and just fine with me. At 7:03, after they’ve shot around for a couple minutes, Sammy comes strolling in. 9 is even better than 8 with me, as we then have 3 teams for 3 on 3.

During the intro speech I ask the players to think of what their strength as basketball players is. I paused and then told them that hopefully they had showed me that nights 1 & 2, but if they hadn’t, now was the time to do it. I also explained that if a player was on the bubble, the tie breakers would be their attitude and their defense.

To back up that message about defense, we start off with defensive slides. Quintin, one of my bubble boys, isn’t there so I am focusing most of my attention on Leonardo and Jack. And Leonardo looks much better at this than does Jack. Overall their ability to do this drill is still limited. I still don’t get it. I should mention that we’re only practicing on half a court tonight because there are girl tryouts going on simultaneously.

After the slides we do animal rebounding. They are lined up randomly, and so they are placed into random groups. I put Sammy in the second group and task the players with explaining to him how it works. We played to 5, where there is less luck involved than a game to 3. But interestingly enough Michael, who had finished first in his group before, finished first again. So that bodes well for him. He did a particularly good job of managing to get a shot off inside even under pressure. I know from talking to his coach from last year that he sees himself as more of a perimeter sort of player and also a player who expects a lot of playing time. It seems like it might come down to the idea that if you want the playing time you should expect to be inside some of that time. In the first group Grant finished 2nd, Sammy 3rd, Seth 4th, and Jack 5th. This was Jack’s second last place finish, though to his credit he was in there mixing it up, he just couldn’t pull it off. In the second group it went Matthew, Austin, Mason, and Leonardo.

Next up was the triangle passing drill. With only 8 players there I decide to have them do the full rotation, so everyone plays defense twice, and each of the three offensive positions. One group does manage to get to 10 passes, so that’s good. Less good is that I can’t tell you who. Can’t do that, because the girls’ coach constantly had lines in front of where my camera was setup, so I have no footage from last night. Rather aggravating actually. It is during the triangle passing that Sammy starts to make a case for himself. It is also towards the end of this that Josh shows up. He was one of the football people, so I was definitely not expecting him.

After the triangle passing drill I have them run some relays, which I was not paying attention to, and thought I’d just pick up later on video. While these were going on I was making teams for 3 on 3. Before 3 on 3, I wanted to see some outside shooting, something we hadn’t done at all. I wanted to give them a lot of time for 3 on 3, so we played a game of “Golf”. The idea in golf is to make a jump shot from the elbow. If you miss you don’t want the ball to hit the floor. It’s a rebounding and shooting drill all in one.

We then spent the next 25 minutes doing 3 on 3. And this is where things got interesting. Leonardo made a strong case for himself with his defense. Sammy made a case for himself as well with some real aggressive defense, though doing so without getting beat due to his speed, and he made a surprising number of shots. I don’t exaggerate when I say he has no shooting form. So did he get real lucky? I dunno.

The group had gotten tired with 3 on 3, so we ended with a couple more games of Golf, to make sure I had a sense of their outside shooting, and then a game of lightening, which I ended half way.

I ended tryouts by thanking everyone, telling them how they had shown more and more each night of tryouts, and shaking their hands while thanking them for trying out. Here’s a recap of the players:

Yes
In rough order from who I see as most talented to least:

Alex: He’s going to be our center. Much of the offense ran through him last year and I anticipate something similar this year. Due to his inside strength, and our general lack elsewhere, I think we’ll run a 4 out 1 in offense.

Josh: Despite being short, he’s tough. He’ll be our starting point guard. In fact at the moment he’s the only kid who I trust to both pass and dribble. Now the bad news is that he choked, repeatedly, while shooting layups in 3 on 3. He must have missed 6 or 7 over the course of the time. At the 5B level that’s a lot of baskets to give up.

Michael: I don’t have a good handle on his personality yet. This is a kid who, while my back was turned, both shot at a basket while waiting for a drill (definite no-no), but also sprinted when I asked him to go do something, again with my back turned. He definitely had some negative words for his fellow teammates. So I think there is the potential to be a leader there, but he’s far away from it right now. Good news is that he can do all the big things, shoot, dribble, defend, rebound, fairly well making him a nice overall package. As I indicated he’s a possible 4 player for us.

Seth: This kid has real potential. He’s the second tallest player on the team after Alex, but doesn’t have the fortitude to play big yet. Hopefully that can be developed. What I really like about him is his good attitude & his ability to have explosive speed with the ball. If he can improve his shot, he has the ability to take over a game, something that Josh and Alex have, but Michael lacks. Jon, last year’s coach, said he got much better as the season went on, hopefully there will be similar growth this year. As a starter he would probably play the 3 position, or small forward.

Austin: Here’s a kid who doesn’t have that ability to take over the game, but he’s not going to cost you a game either. If we were playing tomorrow he’d be our starting 2, which as I tend to coach is less a shooting guard and more a release valve. I tend to like my most athletic players at the 3 spot, where they can work both inside and out, or at point directing the offense.

Grant: If Michael can’t cut it as a 4, it would likely fall to Grant. The kid’s ball handling isn’t terrific, but he does have a terrific sense of humor and seems liked by his peers, which is always good for a team. He’s good at lay-ups, which is good for a 4. He made extreme efforts to thank me at all the tryouts, which was a nice show of respect, even if it was most likely parent urged.

Matthew: Probably our back-up point or 2 guard. Prone to mental mistakes at times, he can still be a solid ball handler. He wore a hat the first day of tryouts which didn’t even register with me until I saw the video. Frankly I find something about him off personality wise, and if there were more options I wouldn’t take him on that basis alone. However, this wasn’t a huge group trying out so I will take what I can get.

Mason: Before last night I’d have placed him much higher. He’s definitely the shortest player on the team. There were times tonight where another player just took the ball away from him. In this he reminds me of where Jack, a player on my GL teams for the past two years ago, was when in 4th grade. By the time he was done in 5th grade he’d learned how to avoid giving up the ball purely because someone was bigger and stronger. Mason has a good deal of basketball IQ and can see the court well. I would prefer for him to be our backup point guard, so hopefully he start to figure out strategies, with some coaching included, on how to not be taken advantage of.

Bubble Boys

Leonardo: He’s willing to take risks on defense to get that big score. That can be quite problematic as it leaves us vulnerable. He has, however, probably the best court vision of anyone outside of Josh, and will frequently make that pass to make it happen. Jon mentioned that he grew a lot last year, as I don’t believe he’d ever played organized basketball at all before this. Before last night it was basically between him and Quintin, but he showed me enough during 3 on 3, to say I should take him. Particularly because I think he can play back-up center. He doesn’t have the height, but does have the bulk, and this helps free me to use Seth to better effect. He came through on defense, and I said I was looking carefully at that, so he has become a yes.

Jack: He was an almost for sure yes coming into night 3. However, I watched him closely and can’t see what he does well. That was the charge I gave at the start of the tryouts: think of what you do well and show it to me. He seems like a nice enough kid. But what role or purpose would he have on the team? I’m not all that enthused about a kid like Matthew either, but it’s clear that Matthew’s skills warrant being on the team. Not so with Jack.

Quintin: It was disappointing not to see Quintin there. Unlike with Jack, Quintin does have real strengths. Quintin has a good sense of the floor, on both offense and defense. He doesn’t have the footspeed to always do what he needs to on defense, but he knows how to be in help, for instance, something I didn’t see watching other kids. He’s not going to b e an attitude problem in anyway, and would likely be happy with whatever playing time he got. Someone like Jack might be a little more skilled than he is, which is why going into today Jack was the yes and Quintin the maybe. But Quintin has definite things he brings to the table, if not much of a perceived upside.

Sammy: I thought for sure he was going to cut himself and was not surprised when we got started and he wasn’t there. But he arrived late and gave a very good tryout. He uses his speed to excellent effect on defense. When we would press the ball, Sammy would be an absolute nightmare for the other team. Only problem is that once we got the ball, he becomes a nightmare for us. Even if his shot is better than his form suggests, and I’m not convinced that it is, his ball handling is atrocious and a liability in any type of fast break situation, like the kind created by his steals. He would be a project. Does he have the desire to improve and get better? I just don’t know. The upside that Quintin lacks, is here in spades, but Quintin is definitely the better basketball player at this moment. Would that still be true in February? I dunno.

So me and my big pen talk about how my decision has been easier than in years past. And if Sammy doesn’t show up last night and perform the way that he did it is. I take Leonardo & Quintin, and cut Jack. Now though, I’m in a much stickier situation. I have until 4 today to make up my mind and I’m going to use all the time I have to sort it out, as who I think I should take changes by the hour.

AH Tourney Writeup

GL had a couple games last weekend that I have not gotten around to writing up. I hope to find time this week to do that.

This weekend HP participated in a tournament sponsored by AH. The fourth grade bracket was the largest of the tournament with 12 teams participating. It was structured such that we would play 3 games in pool, with the winner of each pool plus a wild card advancing.

Our pool consisted of a team who I wasn’t familiar with, SC, JCC”s 4th grade team, and PL, which I thought was the one we played, but in the end I think was the PL in the B league (there was no A and B bracket for 4th grade). The games would consist of 2 twenty minute halves. The clock would only stop on timeouts, and in the last minute of the first half, and the last two minutes of the second half.

Our first game was against SC. If you could call it a game. They pressed right from the start, despite tournament rules having suggested this wasn’t the case with 4th grade. Basically the game was over in the first five minutes. I had decided to go with hockey subs, aka subbing out all of the players every 2-3 minutes. The game was never close, but we played extremely hard the whole time. We made particularly good use of the bounce pass to beat their zone on several occasions. We were outclassed by this team. In fact I would be bold enough to say GL would have trouble against this team. After the game the coach spoke very complementarily about our team. I felt the same. The game was a blow-out, but we never stopped trying. It was good to see, despite the 46-22 final score.

Our next game was against JCC’s 4th grade team. And we played just horrendously. I started us off with a press, which was meaningless and led to some uncontested layups. We were finding decent, but not great, shots on offense that we then missed. We were down by 6 at half. I had decided not to do hockey subs in the second half in hopes that we could get back into it. We came out in the second half and played even worse. With 8 minutes left we were down by 12, after having been down by as much as 15. Remember that in a normal league game if we score 12 points in a 7 minute quarter, with the clock stopping the whole time, we’d have done fairly well. Starting at about 10 minutes I had become a broken record of “Get the ball”. Finally at the 8 minute mark, after my having said it probably 20 times by that point, we started going for the ball. And we just started on a completely improbable comeback. Basically we just out play JCC, with them missing the few shots that they do get off. With just under 35 seconds left we get to with-in two. However, we get two good shots at the end, one of which was basically a wide open Jack A shot inches from the basket, that we can’t get to fall. We lose.

After the game I have to decide on what version to give the post game speech. I decide to end it on a negative note, the opposite of what I normally do. I complement team on the amazing effort they showed during the last 8 minutes of the game, and everyone had gotten playing time in that stretch even if I did rely more on a core of Josh, Zach, Jack A, and Danny to get it done for us. But I then really point out that the only reason we needed to make an improbable comeback was because of our weak play in the first 32 minutes. That we should never have put ourselves in that position to begin with. I tell them to all get a good night’s sleep so that we can come out playing better during Sunday’s games.

This morning we play PL’s B team. And just as it was a mismatch between us and SC, it was a mismatch between us and PL. We were up by 10 after 5 minutes, and that was as close as they ever got, despite the fact that I had us start to play defense inside the three point arc and in the second half told them to only take shots in the key (which they only semi-listened to). We win 40-19 and I’m proud of the type of game I saw.

That leaves us with our “cross-over” game to finish out the tourney. We end up playing SC’s B team. The game is a nail biter the whole way, with no team ever having a lead of more than 4 points. SC is taken aback by our frantic pace at first, but their coach ends up employing his own “hockey subs” to compensate in the second half, to great effect. Unfortunately, SC is a fast team and so they minimize the number of layups we’re able to convert off of our steals. Further, they do a good job of getting the ball up the court at the end of the game for some easy points. But the real story of the game was the foul trouble we got ourselves into. They were in double bonus for a substantial part of the second half. Jon got 4 fouls in the first half, meaning he basically sat most of the second half. Danny and Jack A managed to foul out. It wasn’t good. In the end we just couldn’t pull through and lose by 5, thanks to some late free throws they made.

SC was, most likely, a better talented team than we were. The fact that we were able to make it a competitive game, despite only having 9 players, and less effectively during the second half due to foul trouble, speaks well. Overall I’m happy with how we played. However, we need to win more of these close games. The team wonders about itself. I am hopeful that the HP tourney, which is only going to have 5 or 6 teams, could be a chance for us to get a surprise 1st or 2nd.

Taking a look at our players individually for the weekend:

Adam: He’s really growing. He continues to be clueless what to do when we’re not on the fast break. However, his defense has improved dramatically EXCEPT that he can’t guard a cutter to save his life. He must have given up 10 points on give and gos in the SC game. Just utterly clueless. That said he does a good job of pressuring and stealing the ball while committing almost no fouls.

Ben & Jon: They struggle more with our more upbeat play and are good at intercepting passes and helping on defense, but struggle with guarding a player with the ball. On offense they aren’t quite as fast as others and do better with the chance to cut and move, which is something we need to do more of. They have an nontraditional shot which is quite ugly, if effective for the moment, and one that I’m working with them on changing.

Danny: He’s done a much much better job of not being reckless with the ball. This is good because he’s able to dribble with the ball at about 95% of his sprinting speed, and his sprinting speed is fairly fast. He’s particularly adept at intercepting in bounds passes, but struggles, as in this game, at getting in front of the ball and stealing without fouling. He was not much of a factor at all on offense this weekend. His dad and I talked today at breakfast (which we went to in-between games) about the need for him to look to pass rather than just drive.

Gavin: Once again was out of town due to hockey. Basically I’ve just decided that he’s not around enough to treat as an equal member of the team. While we will continue to do hockey subs, he will sit out more frequently than others. I will be letting him know this next Saturday when he is at practice. It’s a shame because he’s definitely one of the best players on the team. But he’s not made the commitment others have, his play has suffered for it, and it’s simply not fair to the kids who have made the commitment.

Henry: Henry is a bit of a ball hog. He takes ever shot he thinks he can get away with, with many that he’d have been better off not taking. The frustrating thing is that he can’t make his layups on the fast break. He was open NUMEROUS times during the JCC, PL, and SC B games for layups and he made only a couple of the shots. It’s a frustrating thing all around. I also had to give it to him on the bench during the JCC game for being negative. He got the message and improved there the rest of the weekend.

Jacob: He’s finding shots in his range, and making them. More than any other player on the team, he’s taken my preaching of using your legs along with a high arc to heart, and so I feel fairly good about the improvement I’ve helped to contribute to in his game. Of course, he’s still a defensive liability, unable to really shut down kids who are even slightly bigger than he is, though he’s doing a better job of rebounding against those bigger kids.

Jack A: He’s raw, but he plays ferociously. Right now his defense is better than his offense, but his offense is making progress. His blown shot at the end of the JCC game was just heart breaking, absolutely heart breaking. He missed Saturday’s practice because he mistakenly thought we had a game. It’s a shame since we worked on driving and kicking it out, a skill that he could sorely use help on improving. He’s got a weird gait, such that it constantly seems like he’s injured when he’s jogging up the court, and he tends to display the all too typical 9 y/o behavior of over exaggerating his injuries. That said he’s a big reason why our all out going for the ball works, since he’s single minded in that effort. Sometimes this is a problem on defense, but happily teams didn’t exploit that this weekend.

Jack B: He’s benefited from our upbeat pace, which has opened up the court and allowed him to do the little things, particularly on defense, that he does so well. He’s got the best court vision on the team, but doesn’t quite have the ball handling skills to execute on that court vision, which is why he has found himself usurped by others at point. Still it was good to see him pull down numerous rebounds this weekend, and generally be a defensive menace. I hadn’t liked his play lately and this was a real positive turn.

Josh: His dad thinks he’s lazy. I can’t really disagree. Part of this means his conditioning isn’t what it should be. He is probably the best outside shooter we have on the team, but since I so actively discourage outside shots, that’s not the greatest skill to have on our team. That said he does much better in our aggressive “get the ball” defense than when we play a more regular man to man. He doesn’t commit the effort required there. Hopefully at some point he’ll mature in this respect.

Zach: He was feeling ill on Saturday and missed our games today. He would have been the difference in the SC B game. He remains our most complete player, and does an excellent job of shutting down kids much bigger than he on defense. His play was a big reason we got back into the game against the JCC. It was a real shame not to have him today.

HP’s schedule remains brutal. Next weekend we face undefeated NF, and then have the HP tourney. We could beat NF, I feel, with a good game, and a respectable showing in the HP tourney is possible given the small size. Hopefully we can make all that happen.

Midseason Overview

Half way through the season seems like a good time to take stock of where the teams are at. First up is GL. I am doing this from work, so I have no stats in front of me, and am instead doing this based on my recollection, except for what I can get from the league website.

Team Overall
We stand at 5-3. A record of 10-6 would likely give us the somewhere between the 4th and 6th seeds in the playoffs. There’s good news there though. The winning percentage of the teams we’ve lost to is .710 and the teams we’ve beat is .406 with an overall total of .510. Basically in losing to WK and AH we’ve lost to two of the strongest teams in the conference. The EV loss is just unfortunate. A good test will be this weekend against LV. They’re 6-0. They likely think they’re hot stuff. But 5 of their 6 victories come against teams in the bottom 6 places. They’ve also beat LS. In other words, LV is exactly the sort of team, like LS, that we need to beat, to show that we belong in a strong second tier versus a middling tier. But basically we’re an upper half of the conference team. This is better than I expected. I expected to be somewhere between 7-9 and 9-7. At this point, and based on our remaining schedule (the winning percentage of our remaining opponents is only .400) I’d be disappointed with 9-7. My goal is 11-5 though 13-3 would not be unreasonable. So overall the team is exceeding my pre-season expectations, but basically meeting my in-season expectations, in that we’ve won the games I’d expected to win, lost the three I expected to lose, though I’m still proud at how close we came to an upset against WK.

The Players

Andrew – He’s shown slow, but steady progress over the season. He fancies himself a much better shooter than the statistics show, especially at the free throw line. He’ll miss shot after shot after shot, even in practice, but still think he can make it. I support the positive attitude, since to a certain extent it does make him better than he would be otherwise. His big problem is that he stand around far too often on offense, waiting for someone to pass to him so he can take his shot. He’s working hard to improve on defense, though I feel those demands have never really been made on him before. I think it’s a shame that he wasn’t on our team last year since I think he’d have grown a lot as a player on that team. Alas. I see him having a lot room for growth, even if he only continues his steady advancement.

Brian – I’m glad Winter Break was when it was. Brian and I had had a few problems before break and the time off likely did us both good, though more him than I since I tend to be good about letting bygones be bygones. During the first part of the season he played well on offense. His commitment to defense wasn’t what I wanted it to be, and this was indeed the source of a lot of our tension. He’ll take too many risks & not move around like he should. I would, however, still consider him one of our top 5 players, but he’d be the 5th on that list. But the bigger problem, as alluded to above, is not his ability but his attitude. He’s a pessimist through and through and he shares his pessimism out loud and in a cancerous sort of way. I hope to do a better job of coaching him in the second half of the season to mitigate his negative aspects. But, as always, it’s a balancing act. Hopefully the two of us won’t fall down.

Cameron – Since break he’s decided he’s a shooter. So he’s shot a bunch of shots. And made about 2. Perhaps he could shoot, if he were shooting closer. His shooting arc, for instance, is much improved. His shots all look good, but keep missing. I have decided we’re beyond simply luck. I made a comment about it at yesterday’s practice to him. I expect we’ll see some change there. His defense has improved dramatically from the start of the season, but that’s not surprising. Basically whatever we work on at practice improves with Cameron since this is his first serious basketball season. He basically plays 7-10 minutes a game, but this doesn’t seem to phase him in the least.

Dante – Dante’s been a disappointment. He looked from tryouts and early practices, like a greatly improved player from last year. In reality he’s turned out to be the 5th grade version of what he was last year. He can sometimes have a soft accurate shooting touch. But he is slow. He disappears against bigger players. He fails to pull down the amount of rebounds you’d hope from somebody of his size. Even worse his free throw shooting has gone from rock solid to mediocre and I haven’t been able to figure out what he’s doing differently to help him get back on track. Still he’s a great kid to have on the team. I have found that playing him and Justin together often allows Dante to play better than he would otherwise, though this of course doesn’t help in terms of spelling Justin either from fatigue, or when he’s having a bad day.

David – A step above every other player on the team. However, at this higher level he’s simply incapable of consistently taking over a game at will. He still can take over a game, as he showed for a bit against AH and WK, but it’s not necessarily something which can be sustained. His inability to shed defeners has meant that he’s start taking a lot more outside shots hurting his overall efficiency. Turnovers had been a problem for him at the start of the season, but it’s gotten better, as he rises to the competition. Part of that is that I’ve avoided playing him, for the most part, at point guard until the second half. This lets him get in a groove without trying to force it too much. He’s gotten frustrated with me at times due to my tactical weaknesses at times. However, while the frustration is apparent to me, he keeps it to himself. His own struggles have meant that he’s not quite the active team leader he once was, despite still holding that position in the eyes the other players due to his skill.

Jack M – I give Jack a lot of credit. He’s matured quite a bit. I really worried what kind of effect he’d have on the team. While he was clearly discouraged in the game against AH where we were down by a lot in the 4th, he’s coping with it better. When we did all sorts of physical drills in practice, the sort that he would whine about incessantly last year, he said not a peep despite getting roughed up due to his small size. He’s the shortest player on the team and being short presents obstacles, but rather than complain and moan, he works to overcome them. I really didn’t expect it from him. I’ve rewarded him with additional starts, verbal praise, and try to get him as much playing time as possible. If he were playing Small Fry, or some other competition where he wouldn’t be dwarfed as much as he is, he’d likely be a star. I really hope he grows.

Jack P – He was doing better before winter break. He played particularly slow on Saturday. But overall we needed him to make a higher percentage of his shots while still keeping his explosiveness. He’d done this. His potential is quite high, but he’s not quite part of the social fabric of the team, which means that he doesn’t get the credit he deserves from the other players. This is nothing new. Still I’ve been happy with the progress he’s shown in taking his play to the next level and will be encouraging him to continue to do this.

Justin – He feels most comfortable on the perimeter with the ball. He’s got a sweet shot, so it’s hard to discourage this, but I think I’m going to have to, to a certain extent. We need him inside grinding away. Being a physical presence inside isn’t easy for him, but unlike Dante he’s not quite as soft, despite being nearly a rail. He’s so eager to learn I feel like I’ve failed him in that I don’t get him the 1 on 1 attention that he craves and could benefit from. Having him in the game generally makes us a much better than when he’s not in the game.

Lucas – Lucas, until very recently, had been the biggest disappointment. You might recall that when I thought I’d be losing the triplets (see note below about this) I had faith that he could be our dominant player. I hadn’t seen that. Until our game against EV. And it was then that I remembered something crucial about Lucas: he needs sustained playing time. Some players do better when they play a little, rest some, play some more. That’s how I am. Lucas is the opposite. It takes him a while to get in the flow of a game. I am hoping that EV is a turning point in that it reminded Lucas what he can do and also reminded me of how to use him.

Scott – Definitely the most underrated player on the team. It seems trite but he wants it more than the others seem to, but is happy to be in the background while his brothers get the limelight. He is simply too small to shut down kids much bigger than him as he used to be able to do, but he still has that post player mentality. He’s BY far the toughest player on the team. Not sure how much he’s improved so far this season, though.

Tom – Tom breaks my heart. He thinks so poorly of himself and he knows that others disagree with him, but he feels what he feels. He doesn’t realize how special he is, which is, to be fair, part of what makes him special. All that is old news. We were talking before the game against GV and he told me that he doesn’t enjoy team sports. And I believe it. He said that he’s just kind of in the pattern of signing up for the team so then he plays and when it comes time to sign up again he does, but he doesn’t enjoy it. I tried to find out, unsuccessfully, whether he doesn’t enjoy playing in the games (as he feels the pressure) or whether he just doesn’t enjoy the whole experience. But this is the kid who when we’re doing chants on the sidelines does it wholeheartedly and with abandon such that it draws in even kids like Brian and Jack M, who aren’t naturally inclined to such rah rah antics late in the game when they’re not in it. And the sad thing is he belongs. He can be an absolute shutdown defender. More than that his shot looks so pretty yet is off and I’m simply not a good enough coach to figure out what he is doing wrong, which upsets me.

The Coach

I do some things well. Problem is that I do a lot of things not so well. Like knowing the perfect way to counter a 1-3-1? I forget sometimes. It’s not engrained with me. I have to work at it. And I do work at things. That determination to be better is one of my strengths as a coach. But the problem is that with my coaching two teams I’m distracted. And I was burned out. It wasn’t until I was planning yesterday’s practice that I got a fire and drive and a vision of what I needed to do for the first time since the season started. But that was, to a certain extent, because I was able to focus on just GL. The mental space that I’d devoted to learning and growing my use of tactics? That’s all be taken up by my mental space doing the big picture stuff, the stuff I’m good at, with another team.

The other problem is that I don’t do nearly enough 1 on 1 stuff. Some kids like Justin beg me for it, and of course I help them then. But others who could use the help don’t get it. And that’s a shame, since I do have skills to offer them. Skills that I hate taking away practice time to teach, since it’s so valuable and there always seems to be some other more pressing need that we need to work on and improve. It’s a time like this that I miss having an assistant coach who I could turn over a group drill to while I do some work with a player or even vice versa.

My coaching two teams though has caused this team to suffer. But I think that just might be the way it has to be. I give myself a C- as a coach so far this season. The things that I’ve done well come from my understanding of knowing that if a team does X its chances of victory are greater, where other coaches might not always appreciate the importance of X. For instance I think our lack of scrimmages helps us far more than it hurts us, since it frees up time for other, more focused activities. I think my emphasis on having a high shooting percentage as a team is a HUGE advantage for us over other teams. But beyond these lessons I just don’t think I do such a good job of growing their skills. On my list of priorities then, I do poorly on #1, improving their skills, I do very well on #2, having fun, and #3, winning games, I do pretty well in how I prepare a team even if my in-game tactics don’t help us as much as they ought to.

Looking Forward

This weekend should be an interesting one for us. We play MP2, which seems to only barely belong in the A conference, on Saturday. We should beat them in a game that I would think would be like GV: We’re comfortably ahead the whole game though never feel dominating or in control. On Sunday we play LV. I really don’t know how good they are. This is a game that’s a must win for us. It’s a game I’d be hyping a lot more were it not for what comes on Tuesday. On Tuesday, with no practice on Monday due to Martin Luther King Day, we play JCC. A JCC team that I’ve learned not only tried to recruit away the triplets, but, according to Brian who would definitely know such things, tried to recruit Lucas with the lie that the triplets had already gone over to JCC. They are, not just rivals, but our arch enemies. Hopefully good will win over evil.

Coming soon, an update on HP’s last game and on Thursday (most likely) a midseason report for them.

HP Practice

Good news was that, for once, I wasn’t exhausted going into practice with HP. However, the practice wasn’t great, wasn’t bad, but not great either. The fun started before practice. Ben shows up in a foot boot. He had previously been under the “don’t do something if you were in pain” order. Ben decided to hear “you can do whatever you want”. He’s a maybe for tomorrow. Josh had been sick but showed up to practice. So we’re down two men despite everyone being there.

For continuous motion we practiced dribbling, with my placing a large emphasis on doing it with the head up. Following this, we spent some time in a half court scrimmage practicing just moving around, essentially, on offense. Giving them a “position” to play just seemed to throw them off, more than anything. I think I would have been better off saying “you 5 go in and play” on some level. Gavin was particularly upset at being told he was going to be a center. This after already being told, when he started chucking up shots during our water break post continuous motion, that if he shot like that in the game he would come out. Not a happy day, for Gavin, all things considered.

Following this we played a game of golf, then did our triangle passing drill. It was then time to practice our inbounds play. I basically taught them a simple stack in/out cut and a free lance play at the free throw line. Later on, after we’ve worked on picks, we’ll probably do a box play or two. The way we did the stack is simply to alternate who cuts towards and away from the basket, based on whether it’s an odd or even number called out. Most of the players had no problem with this, though a few struggled.

After that it was time for the “here’s how games” work. I talked about subbing in and then kneeling down, and telling the player who’s subbing in for you which player you were guarding. The nuts and bolts of substitution. I then did a much better job of explaining my philosophy about subbing, then I did with GL on Thursday and even took some questions. Jack A asked a good question, for instance, about what happens if you get tired. Would then mean you would get less time. I explained that when a player gets tired, I try to get them back in when they tell me they’re ready. I felt good about this part. However, I just felt like the rest of practice wasn’t as filled with instruction as I would have liked. I think I really need to start including teaching points on my practice plans, and using my practice plans when I’m doing the practice (as I’ve basically done the practice plan, but from memory).

I haven’t gone into nearly as much detail with the HP practices as I have with the GL practices. Part of this is simply reflecting that I am more tired for HP practices than GL. But also, because I don’t have quite the same bond with the HP team as I do with GL and so I simply have less to say about them. I sincerely hope that this changes, as I don’t want to be that parent who favors one child over the other. I am really hoping once we’ve been in the breech together, after a few games, that the bond will start to form. But in the mean time it seems like a good time to do a team overview:

Adam – I really want to like this kid. Or rather I do like this kid. I really want to like his basketball skills. However, while he’s close on a whole bunch of issues, the complete package just isn’t there. He is aggressive, which I like, but his man to man is weak. He can penetrate well, but then gets trapped and doesn’t know how to get out of it. In the long run I think he could turn into a real good player, but he’s not quite there yet.

Ben – The stronger of the twins, when he’s not in a foot cast. Despite not being a tall player he’s definitely going to be an inside presence for us. He had predicted he would be playing a 2, but I explained, “No no. It’s more like 3 or 4”. He’s also a great teammate. Today, for instance, when he had the cast on and was sitting out to the side he was cheering on his teammates in a great manner. He was a definite starter, but now with being a maybe for tomorrow, I’m not sure. I think I will start him if he’s able to play, but just really limit his minutes. I’d much rather have him for January, February, and March, then play him some in November and lose him the rest of the season.

Danny – Kid’s got a great smile. He’s pretty quick and a good slasher. I think he has the potential to be one of our stronger players. When we were doing triangle defense, he did a great job of getting his hands up and deflecting the pass and otherwise disrupting the passing lanes. He will be starting tomorrow. His dad, while all smiles kind of rubs me the wrong way for no real reason. I don’t want to say he’s creepy but that’s the best word to describe how he rubs me the wrong way. Off-putting perhaps? Whatever it is, I can’t really put my finger on it yet.

Gavin – Our center, despite his protests. Attitude is going to be an issue with him more than ability. Well decision making and resulting attitude. He doesn’t have a sense yet of how to play the post, but I anticipate that will develop over time. I had said I was going to start the 5 best defenders, which he is not. However, with Ben a maybe, it looks like Gavin could very well get the start in his place.

Henry – He’s small but he doesn’t play it. He’s a sharp kid and so he’ll be someone I use as an in bounder a fair amount. The one thing that bothers me is that he dribbles really high. Now since he’s short it’s not too much of a problem, but it does make it far easier to steal the ball from him than it would be otherwise. He’ll be starting tomorrow.

Jack A – He took losing very hard in his house league game. I like that. As I said he’s got a real good jump stop and can making a moving lay-up. I tried him a little at point and that’s not the right position. And not just because he has a tendency to travel, by semi-catching the ball as he’s dribbling. He is, I think, a gamer so I expect him to do better tomorrow than he had been at practice.
Jack B – Unlike Henry, he’s a small player who plays his height. I think he’s got some good instincts and could be developed into a better point guard than he is now, but he’s not there yet (as he has a tendency to pick up his dribble at the first sign of trouble). For the time being he’ll be seeing less playing time.

Jacob – I basically gave my assessment of him the other night. He’s got a great grasp of basketball fundamentals, but lacks a lot of the athletic ability to execute. Because of his size he’ll get some good chances to play. I’m going to be very curious what his WS says about him.

Jon – He’s a kid who I’m going to play in spurts, as he gets tired easily. I told him this and he seemed comfortable with that idea. Shares much of his brothers aggression and good nature. He’s also a lefty versus his brother being a righty which is kind of interesting. So he’s going to be a starter but will likely also come out after only a couple.

Josh – He’s a bit slower than most of the other players on the team. And he doesn’t do some things all that well. But every now and then he shows a flash of something, such as today when he executed a perfect through the legs and behind the back crossover, that shows that he belongs, something I didn’t think was true of him at first. But as I can’t figure out how quite to use him, he too will likely see less playing time tomorrow if it’s a close game. Of course if it’s a blow-out I’ll likely leave him in more just so I can figure him out a little better.

Zach – Reputedly the best player in the grade. This is probably true, though he’s not going to be able to take over a game the way David can, or at least I haven’t seen it yet. He is the best of a bad crop at point guard. Unlike with GL where I would feel comfortable putting half the team at point (literally), I don’t really trust any of the players to play point. But someone has to do it, and for now it’s going to be Zack.

So that’s our team. Brian told me some real nightmare stories about some of the PL coaches, so we’ll see how that goes. But I’m excited at having a chance to play a game and see how we stack up.

First HP Practice

So I had my first practice with HP 4A and it was thoroughly OK. 9 AM on a Saturday is a hard time to be having practice. Things are worse when it’s 80+ degrees outside so the unair-conditioned gym, which didn’t even feature a fan, was hot. The kids are still figuring me out (I only got 1 laugh which is unusual). Finally my teaching was fine, but not great. That’s all the negatives. The positives are I think some good skills were learned.

As expected, people were late. Only three kids were there on time. Everyone who was expected by 9:06 so that was good (the twins and Danny were unable to make it). I did my introduction speech. I talked about who I am and my goals of improvement, fun, and winning, in that order. I talked talked about our rules (be respectful of self, others, and the game). I also introduced suicides and permissions. These are my motivational tools. A kid gets a suicide for bad things, while gaining a permission for good things. At the end of practice if a kid has more suicides than permissions they have to run a suicide. Oh and every kid starts off with a suicide.

We started off with how to hold the ball. I didn’t make this as fun as last year with the animal noises. I don’t know why not. A bad spur of the moment decision. After practicing this, and practicing grabbing the ball, we started our continuous motion. They flamed out after only 7 minutes; the goal is 15. I want to get there fairly quickly, but it’s harder having the once a week versus twice a week practices to get there.

Next we talked about what it means to be respectful of others and as part of that I did a listening demonstration. After that we went into wrist flexes for a while. I then went off plan and we played two games of dribble knock-out, hoping that would loosen them up some. Only kind of happened. Dribble knock-out is a game where the players are in a space and must continuously dribble, while trying to knock the ball out of the hands of their peers. If they lose control of the ball, or step out of bounds, they’re out. The boundries get progressively smaller as people lose.

Next we practiced pivoting, and we ended by practicing using our legs for our shots. We concluded practice with a relay race game. In the end only two kids would have had to run a suicide if I’d been honest, so I faked it and said no one earned one.

So the skills were there. The energy and excitement were not. GL’s team had (and has) an amazing amount of love for the game of basketball. That love simply isn’t there with HP. Perhaps that’s some of my disappointment. Anyhow, here’s a run down of the kids.

Adam – Said perhaps two words the whole practice, but was a hard worker.

Gavin – Gavin was one of the kids on time. He’s also going to be a kid who’s going to need a lot of management. He lacks a lot of self discipline and does stuff like shooting a half court shot at the end of our continuous motion drill. He actually got two permissions, but still would have been one of the kids running due to bearing the only kid to earn a suicide, and then another one later on for good measure.

Henry – Henry is going to be another difficult player. I think the skills are there but there is that attitude as well. He finished in second place in one of the games of dribble knock-out and started to argue. My response was (sympathetically) “Oh Henry. That’s too bad. You had earned the permission I talked about to the person who knocked away the most balls, but just earned a suicide for arguing with me.” I did it well as he was angry at himself and not me.

Jacob – Seems like a nice kid. He’s got some weight on him so he’ll be a post player for us, most likely. He seems good, but not great or even very good (which would actually apply to a lot of these kids).

Jack A – Did every little thing I asked of him. He ended up with three permissions, which was impressive. Not quite sure where his skills fall compared to others (he wasn’t at the clinic and what I saw today is hardly indicative of overall skills) but if this is his real attitude he should learn a lot this season.

Jack B – See Jacob.

Josh – The other kid who would have had a suicide. Not a particularly hard worker (though not lazy as I might say Gavin is). I remain unconvinced that he belongs on the A team. RATHER unconvinced.

Zach – A really fun kid. His shooting form needs work.

So that was this practice. Not quite sure where we’re going to go for next weeks practice, which will be more defensive oriented I know. I’ll probably do ball handling as well. We’ll see. I am hoping that with the twins there the excitement will improve since I imagine them being leaders and they do have a love of basketball.

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.

Game vs Cardinals

Yesterday’s game was another disappointment. We had 3 hits in four innings of play. Now granted we had several more walks and did score some runs, and we had a double play on a flyball to the outfield with the bases loaded that ended the inning. However, we simply did not produce the kind of offense we needed to. Matt S did not look well in his pitching and had to be pulled in favor of Noff who did look good. Nick struggled yet again in his second inning though he pulled through in the end. Jeremy Me caught an inning for us and looked good. So a loss, and one where we didn’t have any energy, but hardly catastrophe. We go at them again tonight

It seems like today would be a good time to do an overview of the team, going by our original batting order.

Jeremy Ma – Our best pitcher and likely our second best catcher. He has the second biggest difference between his OBP and his batting average with the biggest difference going to the kid with the worst BA. This suggests to me that while he has a very discerning eye, he should perhaps be putting the ball into play a bit more. Of course I’d rather have him walk than strike out, so I’m not sure if this merits a conversation with him. Thoughts would be welcome.

Cameron – Unexpectedly did not show up for our game yesterday. Hopefully he’ll be at today’s game as we’re only expecting exactly 9. I’d call to confirm except our contact sheet is missing his phone number for some reason. Anyhow, Cameron is our best hitter with a stratospheric 1.67 OPS. Of course since OBP is so much higher in Little League than in the majors it’s hard to say just how great this is, but either way it’s pretty terrific. I feel like we’ve done a bit of a disservice to him as we haven’t worked much with him on his pitching as he could likely be good with some work. However, with the wealth of pitching we have this year our time, oh so limited, has been spent elsewhere.

Justin – Hard to say too much about him since he was out for so long. He does play very smart baseball. Hopefully he’ll be a reliable pitcher for us, and I think we’re going to really push this to the extreme today possibly pitching him two innings. He has a beautiful swing so I would expect his rather pedestrian batting average to rise as he gets some more at bats.

Nick – Nick might be our best all around player at the moment. His pitching has been nearly as good as Jeremy Ma despite having nowhere near as much experience. He has an extremely respectable 1.47 OPS. He runs well, loves baseball, is eager to learn. Not a whole lot you can say which isn’t positive. We saw a bit of mental weakness yesterday. His being a dominant pitcher, as he has been for us, was more of a metamorphosis than an evolution and so the mental part is something he doesn’t have a lot of practice with. Additionally, his pitching of two innings is still a hit or miss prospect. He’s lights out for an inning nearly every time but the second inning is something he needs to master a little bit better. But I think he’ll get there.

Jared – Much to my surprise you could make an argument for his being the third best pitcher on the team after Nick and Jeremy Ma. He’s definitely our best catcher. Hopefully he’ll continue to grow in these areas. His hitting is alright though nowhere nearly as good as I’d thought at the start of the season.

Matt S – He’s perhaps the nicest kid on our team. He’s so big it is easy to forget that he’s only in 5th grade. He’s very rough around a lot of edges part of it is likely because his body hasn’t caught up to his size yet so the coordination isn’t all there. However, if that happens he could be a real good player. His hitting isn’t what I would like especially as he has a tendency to strike out. But I think that’s clearly because of his coordination difficulties. We need to find him a couple more chances at catcher before the season ends.

Austin – He’s pretty good at making contact with the ball. However, the ball doesn’t tend to go anywhere when he does make contact. He hasn’t grown nearly as much as I would have liked. We did some work with him on his pitching but that just didn’t turn out. I think the lack of practices hurt him more than any other player.

Alec – He has quite a bit of potential at catcher though I’m not sure we’re going to be able to realize it all this season. He’s also shown some ability at pitcher which I’m not sure we’re going to fully realize either. However, he’s come a long way in a short time and should be proud of what he’s accomplished this year.

Noff – Quiet kid. He seems like he’s an OKish pitcher. Steve and I have had to work hard to make sure he doesn’t get lost in the shuffle, especially as he’s our worst hitter. Hopefully he’ll continue to find success in the other things he does for us. I just wish he wasn’t so afraid to bunt, a fear I don’t quite understand, as I thin he’d be really good.

Sean – He started off the season hitting so well. And then he dropped off. I think some of this is because he went up there scared after getting hit a couple of times. I don’t really know the cure for that. He’s also wildly inconsistent in terms of his attention. He’s a passable catcher, though I am glad that Jeremy Me seems to be panning out more since it means that we really won’t have to play him come playoff crunch time. I hope we can turn his hitting back around in the time we have left.

Jeremy F – He’s been a pleasant surprise. I actually think if the guy wasn’t afraid of his shadow he’d be a good ball player. He really struggles against top notch pitching but otherwise is great about making contact and getting on base, having the smallest differential between his BA and OBP, which is ok as he gets a “hit” (remembering we count almost all error assisted hits as hits rather than outs for purposes of computing BA and OBP) 55% of the time.

Jeremy Me – We haven’t gotten him an inning lately though part of that is because we haven’t played a whole lot lately. I really wish I could figure out why he can’t start an inning for us without falling apart as when he’s on he’s great. His turning out to be a serviceable catcher is a great bonus. We just have to figure out a way to get him back on the mound.

That segues into one of our biggest problems right now. We have more pitchers who deserve time than innings. I don’t really like to just concede games so we’ll continue to use Nick and Jeremy Ma. After the innings they’ve gotten we have a fairly dense groupings of innings pitched. It’s a nice dilemma to have, but still a balancing act to get everyone some quality time on the mound.

Tonight will be interesting as we’re only going to have 9 players, including having Noff’s little brother. This is due to a band concert, so perhaps the other team will be in the same position as us, however I’d feel a whole lot better if I knew that Cameron was going to be there for sure.

The Season Begins

We’re back for another season. I am hopeful that this season will be better than last year. I have a lot more confidence about coaching this year. Since basketball has ended I’ve invested a bunch of time, just like I did last year, into improving my coaching and I really hope it’s going to payoff.

Quick note: I need to still name this dynasty. Nothing as obvious as last year’s Little Little League seems to apply. Also, this year I’ll be using names, just as I did with basketball. You’ll see this is going to get tricky in a second, but initials still felt impersonal (and wouldn’t be of help) and coming up with pseudonyms makes it hard to capture the “feel” of their name and I’m likely to slip up anyway. So you get their real first names.
Pre-Season

Well the good news is that Libby is no longer the Park District coordinator. We now have Kevin instead. Already I am cautiously optimistic that things will be run better.

When the rosters come out, I cross check with the travel team. News is good. I find out we’ve got three travel kids from the 5th grade team. The 6th grade team’s roster isn’t online so I don’t know if we have any. But 3 kids from the 5th grade team is one more than we had last year so already we’re in better shape.

I’m a little jealous that we don’t have any of returning players (PW and JM’s little brother are both on the Braves). I don’t really recognize any of the players on the team, unlike last year where I need, indirectly, several of the people.

What I do find out? Every kid on our team has the same name. THE SAME NAME. We have Jeremy, Jeremy, Jeremy, Jared, Justin. To review 5 out of 12 have a name that starts with the letter J and three of them have the name Jeremy with two of them being Jeremy Ms. Let’s continue. We then have Matt and Matt. Austin and Alec (identical twins to boot). We do have a few original names that don’t repeat: Sean, Nick, and Cameron. But really my overwhelming impression of the team is that every has the same name.

Anyway, we have our coach’s meeting last Wednesday with our first practice schedule for last Saturday. At the coach’s meeting there is a long discussion about whether to allow 4 outfielders. Steve and I were both pretty vehemently opposed to this idea and it ultimately is defeated, but by a close vote after a lot of discussion. I’m actually opposed to it because it’s not real baseball and that’s a big reason Steve and I coach at this level. Obviously, the coaches in favor were arguing that it was less people sitting on the bench. I actually argued against it on the grounds that the weaker hitters would be denied base hits by this extra outfielder. Not sure I influenced anyone, but I do feel that to be a true statement.

At the meeting we get a list of our player’s contacts and our uniforms. One of the coaches who we were real friendly with last year commented we had a good team. Signs are looking good.
But then of course the great extended winter of ‘07 intervenes. We were supposed to have our first practice last Saturday. Canceled. A pretty big let down.

The First Practice
The weather forecast for yesterday didn’t look much more promising for a while, but then yesterday came and we were actually able to have practice. It was marvelous.

Our plan was to focus on hitting and that’s what we did. Our team was very late in arriving, which was annoying, but what are you going to do? The problem was Hebrew school, so that’ll be a pretty consistent thing with Tuesday practices I suppose.

While Steve and I had a pretty firm plan for yesterday’s practice we didn’t put times onto things and so that severely hampered our ability to run the best practice possible. Overall it was an OK practice, but I feel like I’ve got a better grasp on their personalities than baseball skills, especially compared to the post I did last year. Anyhow here’s a rundown of the team from what I know so far:

Matt A – Smallest kid on the team. Has a nickname, fortunately, so that solves one of our Matt problems. Not a particularly good hitter, but had pretty good fundamentals on the ground balls we saw.

Cameron – A travel player. I think he’ll be one of our pitchers. He had to leave early so I didn’t get a good feel for him at all.

Jeremy F – Wasn’t at practice

Justin – Looks to be our best hitter. During the BP part he absolutely ripped some balls. Another travel kid. He plays 1st and 2nd base on travel, which means he could likely play any position we’d need him to play. Gotta love that. Steve thinks he’s going to be one of our favorites as well based on personality. We’ll see.

Jared – Don’t really remember much about him as I’m having trouble picturing him right now. Sorry. If I could remember what he looked like I’d no doubt remember more about him.

Jeremy Ma – A travel player who I believe will be one of our pitchers. He swung at a lot of stuff he really shouldn’t have, but I’m hoping that will change when we put in a real pitcher who throws things other than lobs and whiffle balls.

Nick – Seems like a real nice kid, but mediocre baseball player. Had some fielding issues.

Jeremy Me – Has some hitches in his swinging mechanic but looks to have an OK eye for pitches.

Alec and Austin – Identical twins. And they wore the exact same thing to practice, which was also annoying. These are two goofballs, but I think in a good sense. They haven’t played baseball since 3rd grade (and are now in 6th) but are natural athletes playing elite tennis and travel basketball. Austin, in particular, seemed very welcoming of instruction. These two could be a real powder keg, as they were OBSESSED with winning but could also be a real boon. I’m cautiously optimistic.

Sean – Has never played real baseball before and shows it. Is a very proud young man. This will likely be our hardest coaching situation, given this combination but I think we’re up to the task.

Matt – Our tallest kid who is also very SLOW. He hits the ball a mile, when he hits it. Definitely a work in progress.

There’s going to be no practice today. Hopefully we’ll get in on Saturday, though the weather again looks none too promising. As Steve pointed out, it seems like our luck that just when we get a good team we’re cursed by the weather.