The view from our hotel balcony.  Definitely not or usual thing, but ok in a pinch.  The weather’s been nice though.

Kate’s team, for which Ted was the head coach and Ben the assistant, didn’t win a single game during the regular season, except for their last one.  Unlike every other team in the league, Ted made sure that every girl got to play point guard and handle the ball during the season.  He emphasized passing and teamwork, even if sometimes the best ball handlers weren’t out on the court.  Sometimes, ok most of the time, this resulted in a loss. 

But the post-season was different.  By this time, the girls had figured out how to move around on the court and get open, how to look for an open player, how to rebound, how to protect the ball on the dribble, and other fundamentals of the game.  Ted also mainly rotated his best four ball handlers at point guard, to minimize turnovers.  And it worked!  The tournament is double elimination, so they made it into the finals even after losing a game to the regular season champions.  The road to the finals was quite exciting, including one game that Ben had to coach on his own since Ted was on his way to Amsterdam.  I updated Ted with text messages, getting the last one in about the win just before the plane doors closed. 

The finals was a rematch against the regular season champs.  This team featured the best girl in the league, by far.  Remember that this is 4th grade girls basketball, where scores of 10-8 are normal.  This girl, however, regularly put up 20+ points for her team, and oftentimes she was the only scorer.  She is also great on defense, getting lots of steals and then taking off for an easy layup.  She was pretty much automatic on layups, although not so great on jump shots.  Her team’s reliance on her proved to be their downfall, however.  Having figured out that she was not such a sure thing on perimeter shots, Ted made sure that Kate’s teammates knew they would need to shut her down on the drive.  Her assigned defender did a great job cutting her off whenever she tried to drive to the basket, and the other girls did a great job of picking her up whenever the defender needed help.  Even with all that, the girl still scored all 14 of her team’s points.  But nobody else scored for them.

It was a different story for Kate’s team.  Four of the six girls available for the team scored and all played excellent team defense.  Kate got a key block on the other team’s star player in the first few minutes of the game that set the tone for the defense.  And their ball handling was excellent, forcing their opponent to get overly aggressive and foul to try to force a turnover.  It resulted in a very exciting 16-14 win!

This first clip shows the last few seconds of the game, as Kate was running out the clock.  She had just been fouled in an attempt to steal the ball, and since at this age there is no backcourt defense and the ball can stay in the backcourt for 10 seconds, she only had to kill the clock.  The best part of the clip is the celebration.  You can see Kate dropping her ball and jumping into Ben’s arms, and then later being hoisted up by Ted.  The girls were so excited and thrilled at what they accomplished!

The second clip is the awards ceremony, where if you listen closely, you can hear Ted explaining that he had just flown in from Amsterdam on Friday (the game was on Sunday) and that he was leaving for South Africa right after the game.  I think the parents really appreciated his dedication to the team.

Guinea hens are loose again on XYZ Road.

I’ve cropped the previous picture to show the submerged car, and added a helpful arrow!  I had given the camera to Ted since he was willing to wade out into the water to take a picture but I forgot that he always forgets how a camera works and he failed to zoom in.  To be fair, the picture wouldn’t have been great anyway, since I only had the kit lens on the camera.  When Ben called me to come down he didn’t tell me how far away the submerged car was so I assumed it was right in front of our neighborhood.  It’s now 5 hours since I went down there to look and the car is still submerged.  They are letting cars in and out of our neighborhood but the main road is closed off for everyone else.  I heard that thankfully the driver managed to get out before the car flooded.

Sunday’s game was a 2-2 draw but it was really a victory for the boys, since they had lost to this team 11-0 last season. The Titans had a goal called back because of supposed interference with the keeper. Odd, when the shooter got pushed into the keeper. Another goal got called back on an offside call. And the ref awarded the other team a goal kick on what should have been a corner kick for the Titans! Frustration abounded all day.