Hoops Madness and other Stories

On Saturday, Beaverton was hosting the basketball games, and we had one at ten and another at two. We played Clare at 10 and won...nice clean game, the girls all had fun. Everyone, including the other team played hard and did their best. Then came the game at 2 with Evart. We had already seen some of Evart's antics and frankly, we were not impressed. I don't like to talk against kids, so I will instead share my disappointment over either the parenting or the coaching this girl is getting. This girl singlehandedly knocked three of our girls to the ground, knocking the wind out of one, stepping on the head of another, not to mention her overly aggressive running over anyone in her way, ripping the ball out of her own teammates hands! The ref was obviously not very good, as it took him 3 times to finally call a foul on her! We have 3 girls in tears, and this girl was allowed back in the game time and time again to terrorize our players. We're not talking aggressive play. We're talking out of control roughness. Natalie heard the opposing team cheering when our girls were knocked down. It was the worst case of bad sportsmanship that I have ever seen at this level. We watched them play the team before ours, and the coaches kept walking over to talk to their coach about this girl's out of control behavior, but because she was the only one scoring all the points, nothing was done about her. We were really worried that someone was going to get seriously hurt, so it added to the stress of the game.

While our girls had every reason to retaliate, they did no such thing! I was so proud of them. We have some very talented players on our team. Each one contributes something different and they work so well together. They don't have to get nasty and they have great attitudes. After that horrible experience of playing an unfair team, they could still come off and say they had fun. Oh, and our team won by one point. Oh, yes, it was a very exciting game. We all peed our pants and screamed ourselves silly. In the last few seconds of the game, the nasty girl tried to rip the ball from our player's hands, and I guess she thought it was okay to push her in the process. She then took off down the court with the ball, thinking she was making the winning shot. The ref finally called that foul on her, and the game was ours. I just hope somehow she learns a lesson before it's too late. I really did feel sorry for her! I could see how much she wanted to succeed, but somewhere along the line, someone gave her the wrong idea about what success is.

Despite all of that, we have really enjoyed watching the games. We have great coaches and parents! The best part is, Natalie is having fun and she's excited about basketball! Serena thinks the best part is the concessions. Okay, I'll give her that.

I guess I have no other stories for now, since I went on so much about the game. Maybe I'll catch you next time. I do have some interesting things to share!