I've Been Quiet

I swear I have no idea what has happened. It's like seeing all the people come see my blog from Joy Unexpected has given me writers block, scared me from coming up with new topics. It can't possibly be that nothing has happened around my home that is worthy of blog material. That could never be the case. *sigh*

Basketball season has picked back up full force since school started up again, first week of January. Unfortunately, both Belle and Bryce have lost most of their games this season. Even so, I've been very proud of both of them.

Last season, Bryce was not the tallest kid on his team and didn't play the most either. He had never played basketball before and didn't know much about the game. Also, they had a couple of boys on their team that, for the most part, carried the team. Carried them all the way to the tournament where they lost their first game all season in the first round. They were crushed. Bryce played like he was afraid of the ball, afraid of the other teams players, afraid of getting hurt or hurting someone (which explains why we were so excited for him to get his first ever foul called on him). This year, he has really come out of his basketball shell. He is the tallest player on his team, by far. He is usually the player that jumps the ball at the beginning of the game, and he has brought down more rebounds so far this year that he did all of last season. Last season I would have to tell him to hustle, to get to where he was supposed to be. This season, especially the last couple of games and practices, he is actually running hard and cutting of the faster players of the other teams! I never thought I'd see the day where he would stop jogging down the court and actually run hard to stop the ball. Defensively, he's becoming a better player. If I could get him to work on handling the ball at home, he would definitely become a better offensive player.

Belle is not much different from Bryce when going about basketball. She started out this season with very little knowledge of the game even though she went to all of Bryce's games last year. She is switching positions between center and forward. She started out the season the same as Bryce, jogging down the court, afraid of the ball, afraid of the players. This past Friday, she was racing Brady during his little dribblers practice, and was actually running. Running hard. So at Saturday's game, I told her that I want her to run like she had run the night before, that if she could run to race she could run to play ball. She did. Not only did she run harder but she got into the middle of the players and even pulled down a few good rebounds. She made a couple of shots because of those rebounds. Even though she missed her shots, she got to try. Here the last few games, she hasn't seen much of the ball to even get the opportunity to try for a shot. Her coach raved over the team after the game, even though they had lost, they tried their hardest and actually played as a team. Where they had been losing games by 10-20 points, they lost by 3. Their previous games were awkward at best, because they were forgetting they were a team. Coach told Belle and another child how proud he was of them for getting in the middle of things and going for the ball. Another proud moment for us and especially for her! She is no different from Bryce in the fact that she needs more practice time with the ball. She needs to work on her handling of the ball as well (if only they would).

Now Brady as I mentioned is in a program called little dribblers which is for the students that are too young to play little league basketball. This program has them practice a routine during the week that they will perform at two different high school games. It allows them to show off their dribbling skills, walking while dribbling and gives them the chance to shoot the ball at a 10 foot rim (meaning a big part of them will miss) but a hoot to the parents and fans. Their first performance is tomorrow night and they're second and last performance is in February. They practiced up until Christmas break, including a day they didn't have school, the week before Christmas. That same night they had their last practice is the night the little league coaches worked out their schedule for practices after Christmas (little dribblers usually gets what is leftover). When school started back up this semester, parents were never informed about practices for little dribblers. So parents started to worry and call the school's basketball coordinator. She called the little dribblers coach who promptly informed her that he didn't have the time any longer to work with the children because he owns a CPA firm and it's tax season. I understand that, seeing as how I just graduated from jr. college with a focus in accounting but would it have not made more sense to mention that bit of information before he took on the position as coach? The coordinator had to find someone to help take over his position and get a couple of practices in before they went on the floor tomorrow night and not have a clue what they were doing. The bad news? The replacement she called (who also accepted) is the dad of a child on the "team." Dad of the same child who I watched get angry at my son during one of the first practices because Brady did better at a drill they were working on. The same child I just knew was about to hit my child for making him angry. Now he didn't actually hit Brady, but you could tell by his body language that he was thinking about it. This is the same child, that during the last after school practice before Christmas, would not participate in practice, who sat in time out during most of the practice because there was not a parent or grandparent there to make him mind and listen to the coaches. Brady informed me, before we found out about the coach change, that he now finds little dribblers boring. He wants to quit. As much as I wouldn't mind not having to run him to practice every week and have to go sit through the first two quarters of a high school basketball game on a school night (when he should really be in bed) I have told him he needs to finish out the season. I will be there for each and every practice to make sure nothing happens, but even at 7 years old, he needs to accept the fact that if he starts something, he needs to finish it. We'll see how well this goes.

There's been the last few days in a nutshell. I'm hoping this week will be more uneventful.