Not only is basketball back in Iowa, but at my school too!

I missed the Kinnick Crossover as we were on our way back from a weekend visiting friends in Winona, Minnesota, which sounded amazing! 50,000+ thousand people in Kinnick Stadium to watch an exhibition game with Iowa and DePaul (let’s be honest, they were there to watch Caitlin Clark) looked incredible. All of those people were there for a women’s basketball game! The Iowa Women’s Basketball Instagram page had a series of videos about the game and the hype leading up to it that made ME want to suit up! Probably not a good idea, but still, it was really awesome!

Basketball at school is back as well. This year, with the new school, is a brand new team, I mean BRAND new. The last time I had a team where I knew none of the players was 6 years ago when I was transferred to sixth grade and missed out on being the teacher for 8th grade. That season was a good one, but it took a while to get to know the girls. They were one grade. Moving to my new school, we’ve got two grades, 7th and 8th graders, so there are 24 girls who are out. Now, we’ll probably lose a few, but in the end, we have a really good group.

Two things about this team:

  1. Like the school, a majority of our players are Hispanic. Does this make a hill of beans difference to me? Heck no. I wouldn’t be at this school if it did. It presents different challenges because many older Hispanic kids are responsible for younger family members. Watching as they come over from the middle/high school to pick up their elementary-aged siblings is fun because they hug and hold hands and just show a general affection that’s not normally seen at most schools. So we may have girls gone because they have to take care of kids. We’ve already talked about this and said there’s no problem because that’s the culture. Who am I to say no to a family thing??
  2. I get the privilege of coaching with my wife. The last time we did this the year was 1994 and we were newly married and living in Alaska. We taught and coached at a school where a majority of the students were native Americans. We were young and stupid and made some dumb mistakes, but I wouldn’t trade the experience for anything in the world. We coached varsity basketball, and my wife would travel with the girls on away games because if I went along, they’d need a chaperone. When the team was at home, I’d be head coach. Oh, and every away game we traveled to, we took an airplane. Alaska was simply a unique experience.

How will we do? That remains to be seen. We’ve got some talent, but we are really, really short! If we can change some mindsets, we’ll surprise some people for sure. Even if we cannot, it will be a great season because it’s an outlet for me. This year in classroom has been hard for a lot of reasons, and the first two day of practice have been just uplifting to me. It’s hard to put into words just how good it feels to be on the court and a difficult day.

Anyway, basketball is back and I’m all in on getting the next 62 days to coach and learn from these girls! Who knows, maybe my Spanish will get a little better too?

Probably not, but one can dream! 🙂