Pure Joy

It's been a really interesting season with my 2 basketball teams and I've learned a lot. I think I continue to become a better and better coach with each season both technically (x's and o's) but more importantly in how I think about coaching young girls.

My 4th grade team has had a rough season as measured in wins and losses and as I think back to when my older girl played at that level I see a lot of similarities. 4th grade girls generally are unskilled at the basics and are typically not so interested in winning (like boys). The girls seem to want to make friends and to have fun.

When I started this season, I sent a note to the parents promising that we'd focus on fundamentals and teaching the girls the game. I set out to do that and quickly saw the lack of basic dribbling and shooting skills. As one of the only teams to practice every week (other teams apparently didn't bother), we had a chance to really work on those fundamentals and basics.

Each week, we played games where we were thrashed by opponents with 1 or 2 star players who were able to dominate us and shut down our scoring. About 3 weeks ago, we had a game that indicated better things to come - we won our first game and then played very tough defense against the 2nd best team in the league.

Last night, we had our first playoff game against the #3 team in the league and frankly, I didn't have high expectations. In fact, I have to admit that I wasn't really expecting much and was bracing myself for a good beating. I didn't want to end the season on a sour note for sure, but didn't expect what happened next.

Pure joy ensued.

The girls put it all together. The defensive footwork wasn't perfect, but the aggressiveness and winning attitude was there. We ran fast breaks with our fastest 2 girls and let them run, run, run. We didn't rush our shots and they went in. At the end of the 3rd quarter, we were tied at 12. The ref told me that if we were tied at the end of the game we' d play 1 extra quarter. I smiled at her and in front of my team I told her we wouldn't need overtime and that we were taking this one home.

I turned to look at my girls who were all looking at me as I said this. I put my hand out and said let's win this one girls... we did our 1-2-3 "Cyclones" yell and off they went to glory.

Winning certainly doesn't really matter in the end. But after a rough season of focusing on fundamentals and the basics, it's pure validation as a coach. Our next playoff game is this Wednesday and win or lose, we've already won.