yes, another kids coaching story (Update: 2016-17 edition)

Sis got a call from Kerri today, inviting the twins and Grace to join Kerri's Koalas in an all-star battle showdown Sunday against St. Rudy for fourth-grade Catholic League supremacy. (Sophie is explicitly not invited.)

Sis passed the offer on to Grace and her parents, and said the twins were free to play if they felt like it. Supposedly they'll decide by tomorrow. The new combined-forces team will have practices on Wednesday and Saturday and then play Sunday.

Kerri also offered Sis the chance to be an assistant coach. That she turned down.

Sis thinks Grace is probably a go, while the twins are "maybe 50-50."

Supposedly there have been a number of snotty comments in the week-plus since the Koalas kicked the Squirrelly Girls into the dirt. Unfortunately, the scoreboard don't lie and nobody really cares very much about bloody noses.

 

I don't want to crash on this thread but not sure where this was appropriate.

I went thru evaluations with my daughter's U8 soccer team last night. She is switching to a closer club geographically after playing with other girls and an awesome coach the past 4 years.

I tried out and played basketball all thru university and I was never as nervous as I was last night.

She was an unknown to this club but progressed in the first 15 minutes to the top line out of about 50 girls. So happy for her and her confidence but I am still on pins and needles for her a day later.

 

U8 and you're nervous?

Chill, man. Most of those girls are going to be done playing by the time they're 12 anyway.

 

Yeah I know. It's the first time she has had to try out for anything and her little brother is only a few years behind.

While I would love it if she made it to a national team my goal is that she stays active thru school and is a ting received league when she is 40.

 

Crazy update from Sis and some heavy intrigue:

Twin A was pretty lukewarm about playing at all. Twin B said to Mom, "If I want to be the point guard for our combined school team next winter, I better play in this game. If I bail out the other girls will think I was scared or something."

Sis agreed. Twin A then said, "it's pretty nasty to invite three of us to play and tell the other three to get lost."

Sis called the other Squirrelly Girl parents to gauge what kind of interest there was in playing. As expected, Grace was in.
Sophie, who did show up for the post season pizza party, pretty much laughed it off. "I'll be playing in a tournament in Chicago."

The other two players were lukewarm too, but said they'd play if invited.

So Sis calls up Kerri and offers her proposal: If you want any of the SGs, you get 'em all. Including Sophie. (Even though Sis knew full well Sophie had no intention of playing.)

Kerri hems and haws and asks for "15 minutes to talk it over with our parents."

About 20 minutes later, she calls back: No Sophie. Catholic school kids only.

(Sis expected exactly that answer, but she wanted to put the onus on them. Kerri hinted but didn't say explicitly that no Sophie was a non negotiable condition set by Rudette.)

Kerri went on: the combined roster of the entire team would be 14-15 players. (The Koalas have 9 players and the SGs 6).

With that many players on the roster, Kerri said, "no playing time guarantees for anybody. We'll try to get everybody in, but it may be only a few minutes."

Sis went back to her parents and the final verdict was that 4 wanted to play under those circumstances. So that's the way it will be.

 

Well, all things end, not with a bang but a whimper.

The twins, and teammates Grace and Allison showed up on Wednesday for the practice for the combined Squirrelly-Koalas team. Except coach Kerri and her co-coach, alpha dominant shaved head Kurt, used them the entire 2-hour practice as the "defensive team."

Same thing happened in the Saturday practice so it was gsme time Sunday morning against Rudette and her St. Rudy team, which ripped undefeated through their rec league schedule.

None of the Squirrelly Girls set foot on the court until Grace was sent in with 2:00 left in the third quarter, with St. Rudy up 28-8.

The fourth quarter dawned with the score 32-10. Kerri announces to the twins, "You guys get to play the whole fourth quarter." Oh boy. Final score, 40-16.

In the post-game gabfest, Rudette grabs StarSis, who attended the game sitting in the stands as a parent/ fan. "Why didn't they put in your kids earlier?"

"Don't ask me. Coaches' decision."

In December, the assembled players from both the Squirrely Girls and Koalas are supposed to join up in one collective team. Ought to be interesting.

Oh yes ...at halftime, who walks in and sits down at StarSis's shoulder?

Sophie and her mom. So in addition to two quarters of commentary, "gee, you guys are really getting killed," Sis gets a complete update on how great life us with the travel team.

 

How many middle fingers does StarSis have?

 

Gotta play nice. Everybody's gotta be one big happy family in December. (Except Sophie.)

Plus, after the Pandas/Squurrelly Girls built up this aura of invincibility for two years, they pretty much shit their own bed by getting smoked by the Koalas in the big showdown.

In postmortem (roaring cheers from the readership), Sophie really was pretty much the whole team, and it was really a delusion to get too carried away with what the team could do with her on the court, since it was a known fact she was leaving after this year.

So it's really probably for the best to start over completely fresh next fall.

 

So Sophie (and Sophie's mom) are out of the picture next year? Having her around too much or too much longer might be tough on morale. I'm shaking my head at their behavior toward the team and StarSis after she went to the mat to be sure Sophie got to play. Is it possible Sophie's mom thought the only reason her daughter was included was her talent?

Been there, done that when my church softball team took in an "orphan" who was excluded from her own church's crew. She was talented, but so horrible to deal with that our extraordinarily even-tempered youth minister lost his composure, strode to the mound, and frog-marched her to the dugout. That was the only time in three years I ever saw that man get angry at a kid.

 

We got blown out in our first playoff game. We were the 7 seed and we had lost by 30 in the regular season to the 2 seed. For the first time all year, we had our full allotment of 10 players, meaning that I had to play 2 squads of 5 and couldn't double shift my best players. I decide to save my daughter and our best guard for the second team while putting our best shooter and back up PG as starters. Our team was playing well in the first half and even though we were down 5, we could have been ahead but for a few missed open shots.

At halftime, I told the girls that if we win each segment (one half of a quarter when subs are made), we will take the game. Instead, my starters crapped the bed and lost the segment 12-0. No effort whatsoever and one of the girls could not figure out who she was guarding and gave up 3 baskets. My backups made up a little ground to bring the deficit to 11, but we get out scored 13-2 in the 4th.

Out with a whimper. The team we beat in the finals last year and kept their team intact was undefeated and took down the league.

 

Sophie will play exclusively travel ball next winter. The rest of the Pandas/ Squirrely Girls will be playing for St Sissy's fifth-grade varsity team -- or teams.

Right now there are 13 girls from the class who played rec basketball this winter. If they get that number up to 14, they'll divide into two teams.


Sophie isn't a bad kid; she's good and she knows it, but she doesn't really get obnoxious to the other girls about it.

Her mom does a lot of passive-aggressive stuff -- walking in at halftime of games and acting astonished it might be disruptive to the coaches.

It was all settled before the season started that Sophie would play on the travel team and would probably miss some SG games, but Sophie's mom seemed almost to be trying to make it as disruptive as it could possibly be.

 

Is it more than a little irrational to really dislike a person (Sophie's mom) who's only a set of pixels on my computer screen?