The Moose Plays Basketball

While he has played baseball and soccer over the years, we signed up The Moose for basketball this winter. This is the first time that The Moose and many of his teammates have played organized basketball. It has certainly been a challenge and a learning curve playing on a full court with referees calling traveling, double dribbles, and fouls. The lack of experience, particularly against other teams with kids playing multiple seasons, has certainly shown. Many of The Moose’s teammates aren’t comfortable dribbling the basketball and spacing and movement on offense is generally haphazard or non-existent. While they certainly try hard, the season has not gone well from a record standpoint. 

They started the season 0-5, though the games were all close. The 6th game might have gone in The Moose's team's favor except for one kid who regularly dribbled past the defense for easy lay-ups. Seriously, look at the score book. This kid, who may be a young Steph Curry that doesn't need to shoot from 30 feet away, scored 25 of the opposing team's 40 points.

One thing to note from this game is that The Moose (#21 above) scored 6 points. In his first four games, he scored nothing. Nada. Zip. He had 4 points in the 5th game, and he was so excited about it.

Then came the next game. The Moose's team was 0-6 at this point playing the league's best team. It went poorly. The Moose's team trailed 24-0 at halftime. That's not a typo. 24-0. Fortunately, his team played excellent defense in the second half and ended up losing 28-10 with The Moose getting a late basket. The story of this game for me was the opposing coach, parents, and then the kids. The coach constantly pleaded and argued with the teenage referees for foul calls in this 5th grade basketball league, even when up big. A few of the parents of the opposing team sitting near me did the same thing. While the teenage refs either ignored the complaints or didn't hear them, I got more and more angry. I was actually shaking at one point. Texting with friends and family and posting on Twitter helped. I also made sure to encourage The Moose and his teammates. After the game, I even emailed The Moose's coach letting him know my thoughts on the other team. (It's at the end of the email.)

There's a good ending to this post. Over the weekend, The Moose's team won its first game. And they won fairly easily 26-12. He scored another 4 points and is getting more and more confident each game. The team clearly isn't the best in the league, but they're improving and having fun, and that's what really matters.

Dear Coach,

I just wanted to send you a quick note that I appreciate all of the time that you're spending coaching and teaching the kids. While the kids may be disappointed in the losses, I can certainly see improvement from the beginning of the season. The important thing for the kids is to have fun and learn about basketball and be better at the end of the season from where they were when they started. 

To that point, thank you for being positive. I've been a soccer coach for several years and have also been a soccer referee since I was a teenager. I found myself getting angry yesterday at the opposing coach calling for fouls and arguing calls with the teenage referees. Some of the opposing team's parents were doing the same thing. Naturally, this rubs off on the players as I saw a few of them argue foul calls even though they were up big late in the fourth quarter. I'm glad that our team doesn't do this. This is a 5th grade rec league for fun, not the NBA with professional players, coaches, and referees.