Zach's Basketball

We've had so much fun the past couple of months watching Zach play high school basketball. He played last year as a Sophomore on the Sopomore team and he hardly got any play time. It was pretty discouraging for him to only get a couple minutes out playing each game. He didn't play much basketball growing up- I think we had him in a league one year when he was 8 and then in 8th grade he went out for the middle school team and played about 2 weeks before he broke his foot in a sledding accident. So he wasn't very confident and didn't play very aggressively last year.

Over the summer, he attended a week long basketball camp in Spokane and played a bit with the high school team in a league. This year, the school cut one of the basketball teams, so they have a Freshman team, a J/V and Varsity team and instead of having a Sopomore team, they created a "C" team where boys from all grade levels can play. When Zach had try outs this year, he kind of wanted to make the J/V team, and I think he would have, but he might have been a "benchwarmer" for most of the season. Instead, I encouraged him to join the C team. The coach is the husband of the other 4th grade teacher I work with and he told me Zach would get much more play time on the C team. So- he did and it's been great. He's been the starter at almost every game and a high scorer on many of the games. He's been having so much fun this year and it's WAY more fun to watch!

There's another boy on the team who's in our ward and they play great together. They are both "post" players, they play under the basket and their job is to drive in under the basket and make the small shots and get the rebounds. Coach said they have the most combined points of all the post players in any of the teams.

Last night, they had a nail biting game against a team that was their first "loss" of this season. We played Walla Walla, about an hour down the road. The first time we played them, one of the boys told Zach they had never had such a close game- they usually beat their opposition by a lot. We were ahead by a few points most of the game last night, and at one point by 10. Both teams were playing so well and as the clock drew down to the end, we were one point behind with 17 seconds. Our boys brought it down, made the basket and we were one up with 2 seconds left on the clock. Walla Walla got the ball and as they brought the ball onto the court, one of our boys got confused and fouled them!! It was horrible! They had two free throws, made one of them, took the game into overtime and we lost. I felt so horrible for the boy- he had red eyes as he left the game.

So- this is just a little post about my boy Zach and his fun basketball games. I love going... I love cheering him on and I think he's doing so great this year!