Brief Summary: 6 of the kids from my son's travel basketball team signed up for rec basketball. Instead of distributing the players throughout the league, they were all put on the same team, with one new kid.
I was very concerned that we'd be destroying the other teams and end up being resented and viewed as bullies.
Fast forward to the events of yesterday. Our boys almost all go to Highland Elementary. We played the other Highland team. The other team had one kid from the travel team on their team. I'll call him OTP for "other travel player". He played with them in the regular rec season that just concluded.
Now, I wanted our boys to have fun, but I didn't want any hard feelings. I also wanted things to be sporting. I was hopeful that our coach had a way to take his foot off the gas if the scores got out of hand.
I am friends with most of the parents on the other team. A few of them have spent hours with me in the stands at various sporting events our kids were playing in. Prior to the start of the game, one of them said, "you guys might very well pitch a shutout today."
That's sort of what I was afraid of. Really, I didn't want to see a lopsided score like 50-0. I said something like, "Oh, I doubt that. You guys have (OTP). Plus, you guys are solid in a lot of ways."
In all honestly, did I mean it? Yeah, but I was also afraid that maybe he'd be right, which would be a situation that would be bad for everybody involved.
The game started and after a few minutes, OTP was lighting us up. Not only were we not blowing them out, the score was tied at 6-6 a few minutes in. I thought, "Oh, good. Nobody is going to get humiliated today."
How wrong I was...
OTP kept lighting us up. By the time the first half was over, they were up 18-10 and he had accounted for a 14 points.
It took me a while to realize it, but for some reason, our new kid was covering OTP. Now, the new kid wasn't a bad player. The other team had half a dozen kids just like him. However, he was absolutely no match for OTP. OTP, alone, scored more than our entire team in the first half.
OTP was one of the better players on our travel team. He was nothing to be trifled with. I'm all for making it sporting once you're cruising ahead with a comfortable lead, but this was ridiculous.
Now, at the very end of the second half, our team adjusted. The coach put our most tenacious defender (also one of the better players on our travel team) on OTP and that finally neutralized him. In the end, we battled back to a 1 point deficit, but ended up having to foul with the clock running down.
We lost by 4 points. I think the final was 22-26.
Now, I know why it happened. First and foremost, it was insane that we put our worst player on their best, allowing him to go buckwild for almost an entire half. Second, the new kid didn't know our offense and it showed. A motion offense is a little advanced for kids this age, and when one piece breaks down, the entire thing breaks down.
While we couldn't quite get our new kid to run our offense, they had already played together for a season and meshed very, very well.
However, the main reason we lost? Because they played great and we played flat. I can't take anything away from them. We had one new kid. They had a team that was a majority of kids who played at that level. In any other circumstance, I'd have been rooting for them. They were the absolute epitome of scrappy underdogs. We were the epitome of overconfident favorites.
After the game, I was standing in the hall with the regular coach of our boys' travel team and one of the other dads. We talked about how the style of play was different and we didn't adjust. We talked about the matchups. We talked about how our boys played flat.
My observations were these:
"All we had to do to lose is show up and expect them to hand it to us."
"As far as I'm concerned, the better team won today."
I feel bad for my boy. He had a great game. I think he had 7 points and he always plays hard. I told him he played great and had nothing to feel bad about. Still, he was heartbroken at the end of the game. I think, more than anything, he was in shock. He's going to get some ribbing from his classmates this week, for sure.
However, there are lessons to be learned in this game. Now, he will understand, at a fundamental level, how it could happen that, for instance, University of Toledo could beat University of Michigan in football.
The boys play again today. It'll be interesting to see how they react to a rather stunning upset.
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