We’ve been weathering a basketball season that has not been the one I would have expected.

There’s one post player who is 6’4″, another who is 5’11” , and one of my point guards is 5’10”. The adage is that you can’t teach height, and that is so true. I can’t get my 5’3″ guard to do the things my taller girls can do, which only makes sense.

However, going into last night, we’d not won a game and lost four, scoring an average of 13 points per game, giving up 44 points per game.

#ouch

Yeah, ouch is an understatement. For this dude, someone who prides himself on building good defensive teams, we aren’t good, not at all.

But, there’s always room for improvement, so we keep trying.

Last night, we played a team that was at our level, and won our first game, 19 – 17.

The point is not the win (don’t get me wrong, that felt real good), but the emotions we had to conquer during the game. BOTH of my point guards fouled out, so went with guard number three, who looked like she was about to throw up. They were pressing us, so ramped up our fight or flight (we picked flight) emotions, and my wife said to me later: “You looked tense.”

But we won.

Later I got an email from a player who let her emotions get the better of her for a brief second. She explained

I was crying tonight was because I had worked and worked and tried and tried and I just was so out of breath which made me not function anymore. So I got so tired and just got emotional which I have no idea how.

She closed out the email by saying she “worked her butt off and made sure we weren’t going to lose that close of a game for you.”

#awwwwwwww

Some days, they drive you nuts.

They make boneheaded plays.

The conversations you overhear because they’ve had you in class and are comfortable enough that the filter is gone.

But they are also willing to run through walls for you because they know you care.

In the end, that’s all any of us want, to feel that someone out there cares, period. We talk a lot about being a family in my sixth grade classroom. Right now, this team feels like a family. We’ll see how long that lasts! 🙂

Oh, and last night (I’m cheating and turning this in Wednesday morning), we won our second game in a row. It’s a big deal for us! 🙂