Approaching Game Day

The basketball team is chugging along, although I couldn’t say if it’s going well or not. There are only two more practices before our first game and the players love scrimmaging, but it seems that when the girls get out there to play all of the plays and concepts go out the window. To be honest, it’s identical to pickup basketball in many respects; every single person on the floor wants to play point guard. It’s unclear whether I should press them harder to feed the post and to run the basic offense we practiced, or just be resigned to the fact that it’s junior high school and find satisfaction in the fact that the girls are running up and down. It will become clear once we play Thursday, but by that time we may be down 20 points to some team that plays with some organization.

I’m also facing a situation with coaching.  It seems that every day someone comes by and offers their help.  Three different dads have approached (two of them managed to sneak in the fact that they had played some college), one teacher and last year’s coach keeps asking me about an assistant coach.  I keep fending them all off because I don’t want to work with someone unfamiliar (damn you, Brian, for letting me down…and you really did let me down) but I could legitimately use the help.  Just this afternoon, the assistant from the nearby high school dropped by and introduced herself before watching a few minutes of practice.  Holy shit, that was a high-stress 15 minutes!  But, hey, if we put it together on Thursday I’m sure everything will become a little bit easier.