This weekend the Hunnies played in a tournament in our town. Our first game of the season was Saturday and we were all nervous and excited. One of the girls raised her hand in our huddle and announced that she had "wicked big butterflies, like butterflies the size of bats." I wanted to tell her I did too, but in front of eleven, eleven-year-olds... HELL NO. I needed to at least pretend I was confident and strong, or we would all be sitting on the bench with our hands shaking, passing around inhalers because we can't catch our breath and our hearts are racing out of our chests!
As promised, the girls got pre-wrap and ribbon for their hair. I think that helped calm their nerves a bit, and they looked adorable.
I knew our first game was not going to be easy. We were up against a team that beat us by 40+ points last year, was undefeated during the season, and played up a grade in the playoffs. I debated telling the girls about how good the team we were playing was going to be... I didn't want them to get super nervous before the game and start out timid and with an attitude like "we are going to lose no matter what". But I also toyed with telling them this will be the best team we will play all year and we won't have to play them again because they are in a different division in league play.
Their team got off to a roaring start and quickly reached ~20 point lead. Their coach, probably a dad on the team, was one of the poorest sports I have EVER played/coached against. In the 6th grade, any win with a 10-point difference between the winning team/losing team is BIG. This coach had his team running the court on fast breaks, when most coaches would have had their team slow it down a bit. Most high school coaches would even do that. My assistant-coach-fill-in (because our other coach was at a funeral) had some good words with their coach about the situation-- he later apologized.
By halftime, the score was somewhere around 22-4 (I think). I decided to tell them at halftime that this was one of the best teams around and it was time to just relax, be aggressive, and focus on one thing each time they went out on the court. During the second half, my team was SO into game and got so excited over the little things they were achieving... Be it a steal or a shot or a rebound, the girls were cheering and displaying more camaraderie than I could have ever asked for. When they got a basket... it was like winning the state championship in double overtime. All they needed was a few little plays and they were into the game. The Hunnies were smiling and congratulating each other.
As embarrassing as it is to admit it, the final scoreboard read 30-10 and I did not even realize until hours later that the score keepers stopped putting up the score and the final score was actually 49-10. I don't know if my girls realized that either. I am hoping we were all just excited to get rid of the nerves and just start playing basketball.
I explained to the team at the beginning of the year that all of the girls would get playing time every game. At this age, sitting on the bench and not playing = "I am not good. The other girls are better. I don't deserve a chance." Hopefully the parents understand my philosophy. The girls will have plenty of time to sit on the bench in AAU/high school. The team we played against, even though they were up 30+, did not put their second string in until the second half of the second half. I understand this is a reality for sports teams, but for me, and at this age, it was awful to see. Even though their team was kicking butt, they were not smiling and it did not look like they were having fun. If a mistake was made by a player on their team, I watched the girl glance over to the bench and wait for some kind of reprimand from the coach. It was sad. During a time out late in the game, while the Hunnies were smiling and excited, I told them to look over at the other team-- not one smile. I told them that I was proud of them.
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