OP Lions Basketball 2022

Brenson just finished up his basketball season earlier this week, so I want to take the opportunity to write about it here. This whole world of being "sports parents" has been full of learning for Chris and me, but we've certainly enjoyed watching Bren do something he really likes.

Bren played basketball two years ago with the local Optimist Club. That was a good experience, but that league is definitely for beginner players who are just wanting to get their feet wet or not take the sport too seriously. Basketball is Bren's sport of choice, but last year the Optimist Club wasn't able to have their basketball league (for the first time in over 40 years!) due to COVID. We heard fairly early on that this year would be the same, so we started looking for some other options for him to play basketball. 

We had heard some really good things about a school in Owasso called Owasso Preparatory Academy. It's a private school/homeschool hybrid, where the students attend in-person classes two days a week and do their studies at home the rest of the time. While we're not interested in the school for academics, they allow fully homeschooled students to participate in their extra-curriculars and that did interest us. We submitted an application to the school, then had to go through a family interview with the director of the school. On the morning of the interview, the twins were in school, but Brenson and Brianna both attended with Chris and me. They did great, but Bren told me later he felt like he was in the hot seat and didn't like all the pressure! The day of the family interview, we were accepted to the school and Bren was put on one of the two fourth grade basketball teams. 

While I certainly won't say playing for OPA was a bad experience, there were a lot of communication issues. I think OPA has grown very quickly in the past two years, and they aren't equipped to handle that growth. Also, they meet in a local church building for classes. Without their own facility, finding gyms for practices was a challenge. Bren was placed on a team with six other boys who were not OPA students, and our coach was someone with very little experience or connection to the school. Like I said, communication was an issue and things felt very disorganized from our perspective. 

Bren's team was coached by Amy, who recruited her friend, Clarence, and her husband, Adam, to help her. Clarence was a decent coach when he could make practices and games, but his attendance was inconsistent. Chris ended up helping a lot during practices and even coaching some of the games toward the end of the season. 

Bren looking good at his first game

He was happy to be playing basketball!

Before Christmas, practices were held kind of sporadically. After the new year, practices were consistently held on Monday and Thursday afternoon, and games were mostly on Saturdays. 

About half of Bren's team had played basketball before, while the other half were rookies. 

We did have a few make-up games that were not on Saturday. 

At one of the make-up games, Bren had a whole cheering squad there to see him play. 

I think the boys would have done better with a coach that had a bit more experience. However, it was amazing to see how much they grew as a team and as individual players from the first game to the last.

Each game, Bren made about half of the points and close to half of the rebounds. He naturally took on a leadership role on the team, and it was good to see that quality come out in him. 

He was also very encouraging with him teammates. Of course, we liked to see him play well, but we liked even more to see him being kind and a good sport. 

The team finished the season with a record of 3-5 for the regular season games.

During the last week of the season, the boys played a tournament. It was a rough five days for Bren because he played a basketball game Friday evening, had his first track practice of the season on Monday morning, played a basketball game Monday evening, finished his basketball season with a game on Tuesday evening, then had track practice first thing Wednesday morning. Bren would often play every minute of the game (they played 5 minute quarters). 

His team was in the "Loser's Bracket", but played hard and won their final game. It was nice to end the season on a high note!

Like I said above, basketball is Bren's sport of choice. He would much rather play basketball than run cross country, but I'm not sure how we're going to handle things moving forward. Since basketball is something he really enjoys, we want to give him the opportunity to play. We'll have to see how things work out in the future, though!