Wanna Be A Baller!

We had been avoiding it for a long time. The kids had asked about it. Other people had asked about it. We had talked about all the reasons we weren't ready. And then, one day we were.

We finally let one of our kids joined an organized sports team!

Brenson has always been very into sports. He loves to play during recess or with the neighbor kids after school, and he has recently been asking about possibly playing soccer or basketball on a team soon. Sports at recess (namely, basketball) has gotten pretty negative this year with a few super-competitive and mouthy boys who think they are a gift to sports since they have a little experience playing on a team. Brenson has often come home from school discouraged and even a little angry with how things go during recess games. While we think there are certainly good life lessons to be learned from those types of experiences, Chris and I also agree that we'd like for him to know what playing on a team can really be like.

A few of the reasons we haven't wanted to plunge into organized team sports before now include: 1)cost 2)time commitment, and 3)intensity and pressure. After deciding that we would let Bren try basketball, we began looking for a league that was moderate in all three of those areas. 

There are several basketball leagues in our town, but the decision was not difficult regarding which one to join. The Optimist Club in our town has a league that we had heard was super laid back, so we decided to go for it! Bren was randomly placed on the "blue team". After the first practice, they voted on a name and became The Jayhawks!  

Bren's first official sports photo :-)

The Jayhawks

Practices were held once a week on Friday evenings at a local elementary school gym and began at the end of November. We didn't know the coach or any of the other players/families on the team, but it didn't take long for Chris to pretty much become the assistant coach and help with organizing practices. All the kids on the team were 7-9 years old, and very few of them had any organized sport experience. 

Games began the first Saturday in January and were held at the local Rec Center on most Saturdays throughout January and February. The purpose of this league is really for the kids to get their feet wet and to have fun, so to say the games were laid back is an understatement. They didn't even really keep score! Chris helped with coaching at games, while the girls and I enjoyed watching Bren play. Games never lasted more than an hour, and I was pleasantly surprised with how little time we had to dedicate to this sport :-). 

Bren got to choose his number, and he wanted a number that his dad had worn when he played sports. Number 5 it was!

It was really fun to watch Bren out on the court, growing week after week. I was so surprised at how much progress he made from game to game!

And not just him, but the whole team really learned to work together and stay organized.

They also learned some basic principles about good sportsmanship . . . valuable skills!

I was only a little surprised that Bren was the highest overall scorer for his team for the season. He was also the highest scorer in most of the games. No one was officially keeping track of those stats, but Bren would typically make two or three of the four or five baskets scored :-).

That concentration tongue gets me!

I think this whole experience was really good for Bren and Chris to have together. Chris took him to all his practices, and like I said above, Chris really became the assistant coach on the team. Love my boys!

While we got along just fine with the other families, I don't feel like we really connected with any of them. Even Coach Kyle seemed distant and often disconnected to us. That's not to say that he didn't do a good job - we just didn't really "click" with anyone else on the team. We were pleased, however, when Coach Kyle set up a team dinner at Pizza Hut after the final game of the season. He even took the time to think of an award for each team member and present those at the team dinner.

Bren's award was "Best Ballhandler". Bren was quite pleased with this!

Overall, our first experience with organized team sports was great! I'm so glad we decided to do something casual and laid back for our first time around. We actually enjoyed it so much that Chris signed up to be a coach for next season (which will begin again in the fall), and Bren has already talked about how excited he is to play again!