Knickerbockers West Coast

Ugh, our first home games this afternoon and we got slammed…both the B and A teams. The B team’s game was rough because we were without our starting point guard, but it was still kinda embarrassing because several of my players aren’t game-aware. Really
basic stuff like which direction to run when a particular team has the ball, avoiding traveling…that sort of thing. It’s rough for everyone when we make silly mistakes in front of our own junior high classmates, who aren’t exactly compassionate about mental breakdowns. Right now the team relies on one solid player but, as one-star teams tend to find, once our opponents began to double-team her we were sunk.

So, it was the A Team’s turn to kick ass. I pumped them up, telling them to focus on the court and not their parents and friends and to shout and hustle and use intense defense to rattle them and send them cowering.

Down 8-34 after the first half says they weren’t rattled.

I don’t even know what the final score was, but I know the referee signaled a continuously running clock for the fourth quarter since there was a 25-point margin. On the bright side, I got everyone a ton of playing time!!

I feel like the team is preparing much better during practice, especially since the high school coaches have started coming to run the practice once per week. Those practices are great and I find myself copying down drills and ideas on my notepad while they are going on. But I guess they’ve only been around twice, so perhaps I shouldn’t expect too much too soon. We’ve got to get a win soon, though, because it’s starting to affect the players’ mindsets. And, from my experience, playing a game without confidence is a surefire way to get run over by the opponent. Well, that and passing to the other team.

On a related note, two of the three coaches I’ve faced so far are the drill sergeant type; barking orders and condemnations alike to their players and generally rubbing everyone else in the building the wrong way. I wonder, though…maybe that’s the way the middle school girls’ game needs to be approached.  Not that I’m capable of such in-your-face behavior, anyway, but I suppose a little less casual couldn’t hurt.