Special Olympics Basketball Tournament

My team participated in the state basketball tournament yesterday. A day full of victories and defeats. We came into the tournament having done eight million lay-ins, every one virtually always at least hitting the rim or the backboard. Every practice it was a chore getting the drill started. "Two lines. One here and one over there. No, everyone can't be in this line. Haven't we done this before. Oh yeah, every practice. Work with me people." That gives you a little taste of our team's basketball skills. We're a very pleasant group. Just not highly skilled at basketball yet.

We had played a couple games against youth groups at a church already. After one of the games a spectator came up and told me, "Good job". I am going on the assumption it was for a good job coaching and she did not think I was one of the athletes, but I'm not totally sure about that.

So, the tournament. We won the first two games easily. The other teams were quite a bit less skilled than ours. Most were facing the wrong direction, most of the time. One of their players spent a lot of his court time trying to shake hands with everyone. I think we won 24-8, then 40-6.

That advanced us to the championship game for our division. They had one really good player and a couple of so-so ones. Their good player would just wait for a pass and then intercept it and go all the way and score. It was 12-0 at the end of the first quarter. We had a lot of shots at our basket, but none went in. We don't shoot as much as throw the ball at the basket and say a little prayer. None of our prayers were answered. I had called a couple time-outs to make adjustments and things started to work. We were down eight at half-time, then down six at the end of the third quarter, then tied at the end of the fourth quarter. We could have had a shot at the end of the game, but my point guard just dribbled instead of shoot because, "they wouldn't be expecting that." Of course, I replied, "No, none of us were expecting that." The overtime was scoreless. Second overtime - Our best player, who weighs 250, fell on our second best player and both were injured and we lost in double overtime.

What doesn't kill me makes me stronger. However, that loss did just about kill me. It didn't though, so I soon should be getting very, very strong.