Championship Game

When you hear the words "pee wee" basketball you might think, oh how sweet  5th grade girls learning how to play ball.  Right? And for a lot that is true but for our team something is different.  They understand the game for the most part and want to win.  They are not out there to have just a good time, they are there to have a good time and WIN.  The coach said "It's all about having fun and the way to have fun is to win."  Of course he was joking around with them.  The majority of the kids at this age will start out playing basketball for the first time in 5th grade.  A lot of our girls have parents that have played basketball so they started playing a couple of years ago.  I'm not saying this to brag but to explain how our team, I think, got the way it is.  

So we had made it to the championship final game.  The girls were super anxious because, Leadhill the team we were to play had beat us twice just by a basket or two each time.  The second time they beat us Sierra said to me, "I feel like I want to cry."   

We played in an open tournament the week before our regular peewee tournament and competed against two good teams.  We were not totally squashed by them and the girls learned a lot playing against bigger and better players. 

Anyway, back to the Leadhill game.  Taylor Bell one of our star players broke her hand the night before in a previous game when the ball hit it just the wrong way, so that added to the anxiety level as well.  I get really nervous sometimes at Cameron's track meets but he runs his race and it's over.  It's all him...there are no bad calls, no missed shots, no almost made it's.... it's just him and the track and his time for the most part.  His is more like taking a bandade off really fast, watching a basketball game that you know the girls really care about is like taking the bandade off really slowly, I mean painfully slow.

And there is something else that started happening at the end of the season, especially at this final game.. I have this other person inside of me that comes out... I think it's part monster or something.  A guest this year said that when she goes and watches her son play she takes a magazine, so when she gets too worked up she just puts it front of her face so she can't see.  I thought at the time, "Wow, she is intense." But after this final game I decided that might not be a bad idea.  I caught myself yelling, almost screaming at a ref when Sierra was fouled hard at one end of the court, she hit her knee and head on the wall as she got knocked down, which was cinder block, nothing was called.  She then got up and ran down to the other end, blocked a shot crying, then stuffed the girl a second time still crying.  They called a foul on Sierra.  I heard something like "My daughter...hurt....blah blah...then you call a foul on her?!" coming out of my mouth.  So I decided I better get a hold of myself.  

As you can see, in the end all went well, we won by 7.  When I got home and looked at this photo I felt kind of bad.  In the background of this photo you can see the other team walking off the court and one of the girls is wiping tears from her eyes.  They would have loved to win the game just as much as we loved winning it.  They still are just 5th graders, 10 and 11 year old girls.  Just kids playing a game that means a lot to them.  I will save the screaming for when Sierra hits high school.... :)

Thanks to Coach Emmerson for the time he sacrifices to coach our girls!