Measuring Improvement

Last night, my 4th grade girls basketball team (remember, I have a 5th/6th grade team too!) finished up our regular season with another loss.

But...

The improvement from player to player is stunning when I think back to the beginning of the season. I insisted that we focus on fundamentals and stuck to my guns this year - drill, pass, shoot and play defense.

While our record doesn't reflect it (1-7), our last 3 games are clear indicators that every girl has improved her game in some significant way.

I was just about beaming watching our girls play aggressive man-to-man defense, matching up, being aggressive and dominating on the boards. We still can't seem to make baskets (I bet we shot 10% from the floor) and have big problems against overly aggressive defensive pressure, but I'm confident we're going to surprise someone in the playoffs in a few weeks.

It's been an interesting seasons so far, but we're not done yet.

Got Our First "W"

Tonight, we got our first win in 5 tries. To the girls, it was fun, but for some reason, it was important to me to get a win before the end of the regular season. The first quarter was a bit of a nightmare, but the girls settled in and played really well.

At the 4th grade level, it's interesting to see different teams and their strategies (or lack of).

Most teams have 1 star player who they lean on.

Some coaches have opted to play zone defense (boooo), which at this level I do believe should be banned.

Some coaches (like me), choose to rotate the girls all over the place and really try to get them to learn the game. That makes our teams weaker at first, but hopefully, much stronger by the end of the season.

I think we're there.