Tuesday, July 16, 2013

Pee Wee Chronicles II

Over the past few days, we've had a rainout weekend, gotten the team jerseys (the teams are each given an NBA moniker, which is cool mostly for the teams that kids know, or perhaps you can coax them into liking), and gotten a couple more players.

* Free Agents
Melo - a 7 y.o. that can flat-out play. Already has a fairly decent layup for the age, knows how to dribble around kids (when he remembers to dribble), and gets after the ball on defense. Problem is, he's quite the ball hog. His dad recognized it, so he'll be working on him. It's frustrating for both him and the other kids that he's so much better, and sadly, John -- on vacation and due back in a week -- wasn't there to balance that disadvantage.

- Decent skills for his age. Rather on the quiet/shy side, but he plays.

* Practice
Now that we're getting good attendance regularly, not having an assistant is starting to hurt. To the dude that promised he'd do it, only to renege on me: damn you. The other day, he jokingly said how it's cool that I'm volunteering, seeing as how "Black people don't do nothing for free." My mind replied: "correction: those of us who've retained at least some of our Blackness, we've given back all the time, all throughout our history. It's you Americanized ni**ers who don't volunteer"... but I decided to keep that to myself. You've got to bring people along slowly.

In any case, to do one drill with all the kids doesn't keep enough of them engaged at the same time; and to split them up means I can't be in two places at once. Isiah's dad usually helps in that regard, but he wasn't there today, and as a parent I can't ask him to be an assistant anyways. His older son helped today, but...I'll do what I can.

Did layup lines for a while, then broke up the 8 kids into two 2-on-2 games. Naturally I could've played one 4-on-4, but we need to work our way up to that. And though days away, the prospect of them getting them to play a decent 5-on-5 is beyond daunting. But, of course, if it wasn't a challenge, there wouldn't be a point to it. Last week, I caught a bit of another coach's practice; they had small yellow cones to help run the kids thru drills. Knowing our loveable little ADD-ers can use any visual tools possible, I made a point to get some myself, and picked some up after practice today. Next time, we are definitely doing passing drills.

And I'll keep thinking and researching other way to work with the team. And wrack my brain to think of anyone else that can assist me.

Someone who still knows what it means to be Black, that is.

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