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

Not a fan of Sophie's Mom but I feel a little sorry for her, too. She might not have ever found her true north, so she's vicariously enjoying Sophie finding hers. You have to wonder if the coaches of the travel team (and possibly some of Sophie's teammates and their parents) breathe a little sigh of relief when Sophie's Mom is otherwise engaged and can't make team related events. Now that I think about this, I think I have more sympathy for Sophie. Fingers crossed she keeps things in perspective in light of Mama's stage parenting.

 

I doubt Sophie's mom pulls this stuff on the travel team. Presumably they have some other really good players so the coaches/managers wouldn't put up with it.

Actually she was fine with the Pandas/Squirrelly Girls for almost two full seasons -- it was only in the last 3 weeks or so that things flew out of control.

 

TRYOUTS FOR THE 2016-17 SEASON TONIGHT!!

And thanks to Moddy for the date update!!

This is for the "regional travel team" in the 5th grade division. The regional team plays 10 games in 8 weekends beginning on Jan. 7 and ending with a 3-5 game tourney on March 4-5.

StarSis will not coach the regional team: she'll be coaching the St. Sissy 'varsity' team, which begins play on Feb. 4 and ends early April after 10 games and a tourney.

That means both the St. Sis team and the "Starrville Stars" will have games every weekend of February. It is possible (in fact likely) they may have three games on some days. It's all but certain they will have two or three doubleheader days.

As the St. Sis coach and fairly big-wheel on the parent council, StarSis can pull strings to avoid any head-to-head schedule collisions, but it's fairly likely they'll have some situations like a game at 9:30 in Farmdale (games at this level usually last about 1:15), then a game at noon 60 miles away in Oak Valley. There will probably be a few white-knuckle drives to arrive 5 minutes before tipoff.

Oh, the tryout? Six players showed up; they gotta have nine to field a team but the coaches think they can scare a couple more up, and Sis might be able to rope in a couple former Pandas/St Sis players. (Although that could be a touchy situation both politically and operationally.)

Attending the tryout were Sis A, Sis B ... and Sophie.

And three other girls ... one of which, Sis reported, "is as good or better than Sophie."

All point guards of course. (This league allows pressing in the 3rd/4th quarters up to a 15-point lead.)

One of the St Sis girls Sis thinks she can recruit is a forward. Eleni, the tall but very thin center, is a maybe.

Sis reported that Sophie, and Sophie's mom, were nice as pie at the tryout.

 

Sophie's mom is gonna frag Sis at some point if that new girl is better.

 

Been coaching daughter's sixth grade basketball team and I absolutely love it.

We're not great and as we approach the opener on Saturday, I see a lot of losses ahead. But they're a fun group, they're getting the idea of the motion offense and they've been an absolute joy. Except for one parent and her eye rolling but talented kid.

 

The political situation at St. Sis is touchy. Most kids at St Sis (probably about 2/3) end up going to Starrtown Catholic Central along with kids from the other 5-6 Catholic schools in the area which make up the Catholic League. (As explained a season or so back, St Sis and St Rudy are by far the two powerhouses of the league, in enrollment and athletics.)

The league does run travel league all-star teams for grades 5-8 with the goal that all the best players will get used to playing together and by the time they get to Starrtown CC in 9th grade they will be a well oiled machine.

The problem with that is that our family has never sent anybody to Starrtown CC. The public high school in Starrville is ranked among the tops in the state academically and my parents never saw any logic in paying big tuition to send any of us to Starrtown CC for high school (HS tuition being pretty close to the costs of college.)

So the kids in our family all went to St. Sis for grade school, grades K-8, then on to Starrville HS. That started with me in the 60s-70s, continued through five kids, with Sis being the youngest in the late 1980s.

Now her five kids are following the same pattern: Catholic school through 8th grade, then Starrville HS.

It causes some friction with the St Sissy administration and parent cliques, who make no bones about trying to steer kids to Starrtown CC.

Sis knows her kids will end up going to Starrville HS, so she has them play on travel teams and rec leagues with the public school kids, who will be their eventual HS teammates.

The St Sissy ruling cliques don't like this, because they orient everything toward feeder programs for Starrtown CC. There's definitely some attitude toward the 'public school kids.'

Sooooo.... Sis may get some pushback if she tries to recruit any St Sissy players for the regional travel team. Some may be recruited for the "Catholic League Stars" travel team instead.

As a coach for the St. Sissy team, who will go against the other teams in the Catholic League, Sis isn't all that wild about the idea of kids playing on all-star travel teams with the stud players of your rival schools, at pretty much the same time the CL season is going on.

 

Was having a post-round beer with a guy yesterday who's struggling to pay the tuition for his two kids at this private school down the way (it's around $23K a kid). The question was raised as to why he was doing that seeing as how he's zoned to attend the public school my kids go (or went) to, which is perfectly fine. "Yeah, but at StupidMoney High they've never had a kid graduate and not get a college scholarship." "A full college scholarship?" "No, but they've never had a kid not get at least a few thousand dollars."

I thought, "Hmmmm, I wonder if I should tell him that a third to a half of the graduating class at that public school will get 'at least a few thousand dollars'?"

 

Well, StarBro-17, StarSis's oldest, is now a senior at Starrville HS, and he's pretty much locked up an academic full-ride to any Big Ten school he wants, and he's also mulling scholie offers to Cal Tech, MIT, Chicago and Notre Dame.
So going to the public high school hasn't exactly damaged his prospects any.

 

Go to U of C. Incredible school. He just has to be ready to take advantage of it.

 

Really UC has just jumped on his radar screen in the last few weeks; most of the summer, Cal Tech and Michigan were 1-2. ND is a late contender too and he just toured Purdue last week.

I guess he'll probably be making up his mind by Christmas time. Pretty exciting stuff.

 

"The most beautiful girl at the University of Chicago is still in high school."

Quote from a U. Chicago frat boy to Elisabeth Shue in the Babysitter movie.

 

Sis got an update from the coaches today; they've added one player to their 6-player roster for sure and also another one, although the second just had foot surgery and may not be available until midseason (February)?
The league requires you have nine players in uniform to start a season, so they really need to add two more.

A fallback option, if they can't get enough players for the regional travel league, would be to go back and play in the Starrville City Rec league. Registration deadline Nov. 21.

That would be better in terms of cost and travel (all games would be in or around Starrville as opposed to the regional league which stretches over about a 50-mile radius), but the level of competition and playing experience in the rec league can be pretty erratic.

Last year Sophie was the best player in the rec league, and, according to StarSis, one of the girls at the tryout was at least as good, probably better, than her. The twins, B and A, are probably top-10 players too.

Playing in the rec league would be better than nothing and they will if they have to, but you could see a lot of 50-10 games with that kind of lineup.