Mid-Season break is over...

For some reason, Jenna's team played three games and then had three gamedays off for Spring Break. All things being equal, I think they should have practiced every day during Spring Break because "Breaking" is something at which Jenna, especially, is already familiar. At our last game, we took on the Navys. The Navy Blues were a force to be reckoned with and after the first five minutes, it became increasingly evident that what both teams lacked in skill, both made up for in sheer grit.

In the thirty minute practice prior to the matchup, Jenna hit the coach in the head with the basketball when a shot went awry. That is to say, she threw the ball straight into the air, high, and the coach was caught unawares. Practice went on and the coach decided from that moment forward that she would be more captivated by her surroundings on the high probability of facial laceration.

My intent with this entry was to list the high points of the basketball game; however, there were none. Jenna played in her usual style of independent play - in lay terms, she was generally at the opposite end of the court from the one she should have been at. That being said, Jenna did emerge as quite the defensive force during this outing.

The coach explained the defensive stance to Jenna and she did a remarkable job at blocking her opponent. Imagine, if you will, a skilled mime doing the part of climbing out of the invisible box. Or, if that doesn't work for you, imagine a dog or a cat looking at himself in the mirror. Jenna perfectly mirrored the moves of whichever opponent had the ball.

The girl may not be able to shoot and she may not have any idea what to do with a basketball, but she may have a brilliant future in Pantomime. If you see her in Central Park, give her a couple of bucks, will you? Because I'm fairly confident that her basketball scholarship is going to fall through.

Final Score:

Navy Blue 2, Maroon, 2.

Stay tuned for tomorrow's updatee when Maroon takes on Royal Blue in a cage match.

Maroon v. Purple

Well, first, I would be remiss if I didn't call out ESPN for not posting the full results from Friday night's game on its Bottomline. It seems to me that ESPN must be getting incomplete data from the scores from around the nation. Thank goodness, I have this medium to post full results. I would hate for any scouts to miss out on Jenna's achievements.

In an odd turn of luck, the cleaning lady happened through the gymnasium during practice instead of during the game. I would also like to add that I hope, beyond all hope, that she is, indeed, Hispanic because Jenna once again made a beeline for her; however, this time, she said "Hola, Miss Cleaning Lady. Como estas?" The Cleaning Lady had a look on her face that I recognized as the same one that very famous people give stalkers.

During practice, there were a few (ok, two) moments that led me to believe that our team might, indeed, be a legitimate contender in non-competitive basketball. Jenna hit the rim once and hit the backboard once...both times with the ball, which is a glorious feeling! Unfortuntately, she also threw the ball straight up into the air the other 12 times she ran the same drill.

Our major obstacle this week was with catching the ball. Jenna has an uncanny ability to not pay attention in general; however, that ability is magnified by about 1000 times when an object is being passed to/thrown at her. I use both phrases because at times it is unclear as to the intent of the thrower as many of them are lacking in skills albeit to a lesser degree than Jenna, yet still to a larger degree than most normally developed six year olds. Jenna got hit in the face once and in the shoulder once. If she had even been following the game remotely - even in her periphery - she would not have gotten hit in the face with the ball. I don't know what she was looking at, but it wasn't anything involving basketball.

The bright spot of the game when Jenna's laziness and lack of interest produced a new defensive strategy that I'm sure will be picked up by all non-competitive coaches and their players. Keep in mind only three players are playing at a time while I try to describe the new play invented by my daughter that I have decided to call Malaise (due primarily to the lack of ease that I felt):

Purple scores a basket leaving Maroon to take the ball up the court. Jenna decides that it would be better for the team if she just stays behind underneath Purple's basket on the off chance that Purple comes back that way (I can only assume this is what she was thinking - otherwise, it's just too depressing). So her two other teammates run down on offense while Jenna is doing her impersonation of Feste the Clown (does anyone know where I can buy the child a lyre to go with her sneakers?). Go figure Purple steals the ball from Maroon and brings the ball back down. Jenna is primed for optimal defense, right? At the very least she has proximity on her side.

Had she any idea that a) the other team would be coming back in her general direction, or that b) she was about to be faced with the spoils of her own design (read: 3 on 1 with her being the 1), it is entirely plausible that her master plan would have been successful. As it stands, however:

Purple 10, Maroon 4

In the wise words of Farmer Fran, "We live to play another day."

And so it begins...

Jenna's team had its first basketball game last night. As it turns out, she is on what is called a non-competitive league. After what I witnessed last night, I believe that this terminology is apt. I would almost say that "non-competetive" is an understatement, but as we are only one game into the season, I am trying to stay positive. After we got home, I had to watch six hours of basketball on ESPN in order to erase the memories of what I had seen. I'm feeling a little better today.

Jenna is on the "maroon" team. She and four other players complete the bench. Three kids play at a time. For some reason, there are two #4's on her team. She is one of them. Last night, the maroon team played the blue team. Rules that exist in non-competitive basketball are a little different from the rules of traditional basketball in that traveling, fouling, and double dribbling are not only not illegal, they are, evidently, encouraged. For the record, Jenna excels at each of the aforementioned three.

She has also learned a good deal about "smack talk." In the middle of the game she was seen walking up to an opposing team member and heard saying "You are going down." The opposing team member said, "What are you talking about? You don't have any points at all!" Lucky for the maroon team, technical fouls are not called either; however, we did have two timeouts for untied shoelaces.

To say that Jenna's team needs practice would be putting it rather mildly. To say that Jenna's team needs to learn what the object of the game of basketball is would probably be more accurate. I saw a lot of running, some hopping, much waving at me and a little bit of impromptu gymnastics, but very little basketball.

I must, however, give credit where credit is due. Jenna did hit the bottom of the rim and came closer than anyone else on her team to scoring a bucket. The entire maroon section of the bleachers erupted in laughter when I couldn't contain my enthusiasm and screamed:

SHE HIT THE RIM!!!!!! WITH THE BALL!!!!!

It was a rather proud moment. Unfortunately, my elation was shortlived because right after that the cleaning lady came through the gymnasium with her large cart of supplies causing Jenna to run to the opposite end of the court from the one at which her teammates were playing and say, "Hi Miss Cleaning Lady!" I'm not sure what else she said, because I was crying too hard, but it must have been a lengthy conversation because she didn't return to play for what seemed to be an excruciating amount of time.

Once she did return, she was tired. She decided to lay down fully outstretched at center court for a moment or two before she was, thankfully, benched.

Final Score: Blue Team 4, Maroon Team 0

My eyes have finally stopped bleeding and I am hoping that with the help of a fifth of rum and a coke, I can erase all of these memories. At least until Friday, when Maroon takes on Purple in a loser leave town match...

Until then...may all of your basketball be, at the very least, competitive.

Interview.

So I thought it might be a good idea to ask Jenna if she was looking forward to playing basketball and see what her feelings were with regard to the sport as a whole.

Two weeks ago, I had the privelege of taking her to a Tigers game and though she missed the first 20 or so minutes due to an obsession with the largest cup of Dippin' Dots on the planet, she seemed to enjoy the game once she started to watch it. I thought exposing her to the sport live as opposed to via television could help her to understand what a truly wonderful endeavor basketball is.

I interviewed the littlest athlete this morning and it went something like this...

Me: Why do you want to play basketball?
Jenna: Because I know how to dribble the ball good. Like three or four times.

(I'll try not to interject too often here, but her answer is a flat out lie. She has never dribbled a basketball in her life.)

Me: Why will you like playing basketball?
Jenna: Because you get to throw the ball and in soccer you don't.
Me: How many points do you think that you get for a basket?
Jenna: Three or four.
Me: What is a foul?
Jenna: A foul means a break because somebody did somebody wrong.
Me: How long does a game last?
Jenna: Two hours.
Me: Can you run for two hours?
Jenna: Maybe one and a half hours.
Me: Can you run fast?
Jenna: Oh yeah, of course I can run fast. I ran around the gym three times yesterday. And I wasn't the last one. I was the next to last one.

(Again, I must interject on the grounds that this answer is, for the most part, untrue as well. Jenna can only run fast if she is pretending to be a horse. Short of that, the child is not speedy.)

Me: What are you most looking forward to?
Jenna: Scoring a goal! 6-0!
Me: What do you dislike about basketball?
Jenna: The ball is orange and I wish it would be purple.
Me: How do you feel about playing basketball?
Jenna: Great fun and exciting, by the way, I spelled exciting yesterday and it was so easy.
Me: What kind of shoes would you like to get for basketball?
Jenna: Unfortunately, probably sneakers would be the best. White sneakers with purple stripes though. Definitely.

It remains to be seen what the season will hold, but the good news is that pictures are scheduled for tomorrow for the team. Smiles should be easy to come by...for now.

Positive Reinforcement?

I think our first home game was my favorite of all the games that I had the privelege of observing. We played a team comprised of first and second graders. Our team was comprised of kindergarteners and first graders. I'm not sure how familiar you are with age differences in children, but it's not so much like it is when one is trying to justify dating someone several years older or younger than oneself. For example, when I was 25, there was nothing wrong with dating a 30 year old, right? Of course not - Coach Daddy is five years older than I am.

That said, there is a world of difference between a 5 year old and a 7 year old. There is a world of concepts that are easily grasped by a 7 year old that would leave a 5 year old in the dark.

One such concept is competition.

We went to the first home game elated by our certain home field advantage and when our little team left that day it was still elated. The elation came not from winning the game but from some kind of misguided rule in childrens' sports whereby even if the team loses in an abyssmal fashion, the children still receive snacks on par with a victory celebration. I must admit here, that I am against this practice - after this game, it was clear that not only were cupcakes inappropriate, but that they most certainly conveyed the wrong message to this team.

Highlights from this game include, but are not limited to:
~one child's crying in the center circle for a full six minutes due to the fact that she was not picked to be goalie (once we were allowed a substitution, she was able to come off the field)
~our team's scoring another two goals for the opposition
~Jenna's leaving the field in the middle of the game to go to the bathroom (this was a stellar moment for Coach Daddy)
~Jenna and her best friend holding hands for much of the second half of the game
~one child's attempt to beat the holy hell out of an opposing team member for laughing at the little girl crying in the center circle (it was my hope for the remainder of that doomed season that we could channel that rage into lust for the ball; alas, it was not meant to be)

I believe my mother (who has no understanding of the sport of soccer - much like our team) said it best when she asked me about the field:

Mom: What is the deal with that other goal at the end of the field? Don't we use that one?
Me: That's our goal, and no...we don't use it.

To be more apt, we never moved across the midfield line that day. The final score was 21-0 (again, though, using our math the score was actually 19-0 as we did score two of their goals for them) and those numbers do not even come close to appropriately describing the chasm between the two skill sets at play. It was like watching my grandmother try to outrebound Wilt Chamberlain - in a word, futile.

Our girls were picking flowers and playing princess. The opposing team was playing the sport as best they could while dodging the obstacles put in place by our team. To the credit of the other team, they successfully dodged our midfield trap comprised of Jenna and her best friend making daisy chains and hugging (a lofty defensive strategy that would prove an integral facet contributing to Coach Daddy's early onset of cirrohsis), our goalie's flat disregard for staying anywhere near the goal and the blinding distraction caused by constant head shaking of our girls' fathers. So, all in all, we must give the other team credit where credit is due.

And to our team? Well, I like to think that the cupcakes were earned based on the style and potential resale value of some pretty good looking daisy chains, because I refuse to believe that a soccer team allowing 21 (well, 19) points by the opposition is in need of cupcakes.

A friend once called me a "soccer mom." As you can see, I wholeheartedly beg to differ. To date, I have seen no soccer. To date, I have seen tears and daisy chains. And I must say, when Coach Daddy cries like that, it is heartbreaking.

A brief history of soccer

If you're like me, you have problems watching soccer. Though empirically, the men playing soccer are better looking than men participating in any other sport, it is still with great difficulty that I observe any sporting event where both teams may end a game having scored one or two goals. Riveting, it is not. I am a sports fan who likes goals and baskets - and lots of them. Needless to say, when Jenna came home from school in the fall and informed us that she wanted to play soccer, I was nonplussed. I thought of leisurely Saturday mornings replaced with hours and hours of watching children run around in no organized fashion (it has been said that I have a touch of psychic ability) and also, I thought of grass stains and broken bones (not necessarily in that order).

I vacillated somewhat between dread and anticipation prior to the season's start. But then I thought of purchasing tiny little cleats, and the world seemed bright again...

After volunteering my husband to be the Head Coach of Jenna's soccer team, and after he started speaking to me again, the team started practicing for their first big game. Coach Daddy would come home after practice and get straight into the bourbon in hopes of erasing all of the memories of said practice. After a week or so, I learned to have the bourbon waiting for him at the front door, not unlike a dysfunctional June Cleaver. As the weeks wore on, it became increasingly evident that Coach Daddy was unlikely to turn this group of girls into a well oiled soccer machine. His breaking point came before the first game when practice had to be halted for a full twenty minutes when one of the girls spotted a rainbow.

Though lacking in the competitive spirit, Jenna's team (and, specifically, Jenna) had flair. The verve and panache of which I spoke in a previous entry would prove integral to both this team's lack of success as well as its inability to operate as a cohesive unit. Interestingly enough, my biggest fear of being bored with a lack of scoring would prove to be unfounded. These soccer games contained more points than many NFL games that I have witnessed.

Unfortunately, the points were scored against us rather than by any of our own team members - unless you count the goals that we scored for the opposing teams (which, in retrospect, I do - in order to stave off the flashbacks).

Our first game was very exciting. We lost 6-0; however, we scored two of their goals for them, so technically we lost 4-0. That said, one of the girls on the opposing team was clearly brought in from a Junior High School on the other side of the tracks. She was nine feet tall and she scored their only 4 goals. If we look at this game mathematically, it looks like this:

Goals scored - Ineligble player/Witness Protection Program Participant/Ringer - Inability to locate goal = 0

Technically, I like to think of this game as a 0-0 tie leading me back to my original assessment that soccer does not have enough scoring. That said, it was the most exciting game I had seen up until that point in the soccer world...even if the reality in which I choose to live resulted in a game where there were no net goals scored.

Jenna's contribution to this game was palpable - her very domineering presence on the field was enough to give the other team pause. She played for approximately 15 minutes total, in increments of 4-5 minute stretches. We lost her at one point when she wandered off to the swingsets near the field and the sheer volume of Gatorade the child consumed was impressive. After her first break, she asked if she could have a hot dog. She was denied her request, took her place on the bench and when asked to rotate in for the final 6 minutes she informed us that she was tired and that she did not like to run.

I must admit, however, with regard my initial worries about the soccer experience, it not only came as quite the relief when I found that my daughter would come home with the cleanest uniform on the team, but also once I realized that the liklihood of a broken bone was low due to her proximity to the action on the field. My fears were allayed after the first game; however, they were to be replaced with other emotions.

Obviously, it was going to be a long season. We were optimistic after the first game as the other team had not truly, in our somewhat misguided opinion, beaten us. Very soon, however, we would find that optimism to be replaced with dread and a season long nausea akin to one associated with Norwalk Virus.

It was always in the cards...

Jenna was just one of those kids who never, ever did anything that she wasn't told to do (physically speaking - verbally she says things that she shouldn't say a lot). She never climbed out of the crib, never attempted to scale a baby gate, never went where she wasn't supposed to go. When my youngest was about a year old, I realized that where one excelled verbally, the other would excel physically. And, holy wow, that is a complete understatement.

The Hannimal (whose name was earned, not ascribed lightly, mind you) taught Jenna (3 years her senior) how to climb over a gate. The Hannimal taught Jenna all kinds of things that never entered Jenna's realm of thought to try.

Unfortunately, Jenna's ambition was found almost immediately to exceed her ability.

Herein lies the problem.

When I had to teach Jenna how to jump, I knew that we weren't looking at a future WNBA player, future Women's World Cup competitor, or even a worthy table tennis adversary. As far as I can tell, though we keep trying, sports and all things athletic fit Jenna about as well as period pieces fit Tom Cruise. That is to say, not well and with much nausea.

As we ready ourselves for the third try in a series of athletic related endeavors, we must ask ourselves why? Why does my lovely daughter insist on being completely pumped for basketball season even though I know that she is going to draw fouls with the same ability that Georgia O'Keefe has of making flowers look downright dirty. Because once we draw the foul, we get the opportunity to put the ball through the hoop - while everyone is watching...

I woke up in a cold sweat this morning with the realization that my daughter could, very well, ruin one of my greatest pleasures in life - the sport of basketball. It's possible that after stomaching an entire season of 6 year olds playing this sport that I might never recover. I may never be able to enjoy the sound of the swoosh again. Could it be?

Part of me thinks that I must stop this from happening. I must sign her up for singing lessons, or tap dancing lessons, or art class instead. However, I cannot.

For I know, deep down inside, that I will always be able to enjoy the sound of the swoosh. The swoosh will always bring me back to the empirical love for the sport.

And, of course, the good news is if Jenna's basketball team is anything like her soccer team from last fall, I won't have to worry about getting tired of hearing the swoosh.