Basketball

This year the girls signed up to play basketball at their school.  The school is part of IFBL which is a faith-based organization with some church teams and private schools (most seem to be catholic).  I volunteered to be an assistant coach but they had so many girls sign-up that they created 2 teams and needed me to coach a team.

This season was very different from Upward especially with the rules.  The girls were shooting at 10ft instead of 9ft and all the rules applied including back court, lane violations, free-throws, etc.  I had a team of 8 girls on my 4th grade team 4 were 3rd graders and 4 4th graders.  Of the 8 girls only 3 had played before (yes only my girls had played) and even they had a lot of rules to learn. Also they were allowed to play any kind of defense were Upward had only done man-to-man and had a method of matching players to make the games more even.

We obviously had a very rough season playing teams that were much more experienced and older than us.  The girls all learned a lot and they had fun but were pretty discouraged toward the end.  It was very time consuming to coach as practice was 2 times a week 1.5 hrs each and then games on Saturday but I would probably do it again just to help the girls.  I think next year we could have a good team as the other girls from 4th grade were playing on the 5th grade team.

When we started the season I didn't have anyone that was a strong dribbler and after evaluating everyone I decided to have Olivia try bringing the ball down.  It took a few games for her to get the hang of it and she had the ball stolen a lot as she learned but she became confident and was calling plays and telling the other girls what to do by half-way through the season.  She really became our star player and I think she has a lot of potential.  Emma is a great defender and super fast we used her to help team-up on their better players, we could use her too for fast breaks but didn't get too many of those.  Savannah has a good shot but didn't get the ball much, she is good but not as confident and doesn't fight for the ball as much.

All 4 teams (2 girls and 2 boys) practiced together so it was chaotic at times but I got to know a lot of the kids.  I really enjoyed my team of girls and there are a few that have real talent.