Mother’s Day in the gym

My sister was supposed to spend Mother’s Day in the gym this year. One of her basketball-playing sons had day 2 of that weekend’s tournament about an hour from home. Happy Mother’s Day, sis! She agonized about whether to attend or take a Mother’s Day pass. In the end, she took the pass. As any parent with kids in travelling sports knows, taking an occasional pass is a privilege. And Mother’s Day, of all days, is a good day to do that.

Where have all the cheerleaders gone?

In our high school, as in many others, cheerleading has been phased out. Seems many kids lost interest in cheering for others when they had their own sports to compete in. And I totally get that. In my high school days (many eons ago, when Title 9 was still a toddler) I, too, opted for sports vs. cheerleading.

I know, I know – cheerleading IS a sport unto itself in many schools. But at our school it went the way of the dinosaur.

I’d like to make a plea to bring back the cheerleaders. The kind who can tame a crowd by leading upbeat, positive cheers during sporting events, not the kind who became almost a cliché before they faded away.

George Bush was a cheerleader. And he became president. Cheering for others didn’t seem to hold him back from becoming top dog. FDR, Samuel L Jackson, Halle Barry, Steve Martin and Sheryl Crow were also cheerleaders. Not bad company.

Cheerleaders serve a very important purpose: Cheerleaders keep the crowd in the game and the players get energy from that crowd. Crowds need leaders and cheerleaders make great ones. Without them, a cheering crowd often descends into booing or name-calling. This makes school officials quite nervous.

Isn’t it time for cheerleading to make a comeback at the high school level?

Spontaneous cheerleaders

An amazing thing happened during the final basketball game of the 2007-08 season: Some students spontaneously stepped up and became cheerleaders. They dug up some outfits from cheerleaders past and stood in front of the fans in the stands leading cheers throughout the game. It was awesome. Maybe next year, we can conjure up a spontaneous pep band, too.

We need cheerleaders. Both genders and all skill levels are welcome. Any students with positive energy, loud voices and genuine interest in the game are welcome. No tryouts, matching hair ribbons or fancy dance moves required.

Progress report - basketball photos

The "how to operate your camera" books have arrived. I've read a couple of chapters. I guess all the really useful tips are at the end...

My camera is too good for me

My dad always said that a person's equipment should never outpace their skill. He said this whenever I asked for a new pair of track shoes, a new water ski or a new bike. Hence the reason I skied on an ancient wooden slalom and rode a bike that looked like the wicked witch of the west just rode into town. With my dad's words ringing in my ears, my skills have almost always outpaced my equipment. I just make sure I have crappy equipment and ta-da, I'm better than my stuff.
Fast forward to this year and you can see that I have a great new camera. It has 3,047 settings. I know how to use about 5 of them. And those just happen to be the wrong 5 for taking pictures of high-speed action at a low-light basketball game. Most of the pictures I take look like this - totally missing the action. In others, I manage to catch the action but the shot is totally blurry.
Somewhere, my dad is rolling his eyes. A classic case of a person’s equipment outpacing their skill. I ordered some ‘how to’ camera books from Amazon so I can rightfully deserve the equipment I already own. I’ll get back to you. You too, Dad.

Parent Night

Parent night is a night set aside to honor parents for helping their kids become basketball players. A good idea. And well-deserved. But don't you think the kids should plan and execute said parent night? I do. That's not how it works, at least at our school. How does it work at yours? At our high school, parent night is planned and carried out by the moms in the booster club. And they did a great job! It was a lot of work and we thank them. We received maroon and gold carnations, and notes from our kids during a pre-game introduction. Pictures were taken. A
half-time shoot out between the parents proved that most of our kids inherited their basketball skills from someone else. (Just kidding.) And to top it off, after the game that night, we had sloppy joes, chips and dessert. A wonderful evening. One I am sure each mom and dad will remember. Will our sons remember? I sure hope so.

Officiating

Do you ever notice that the one thing every fan at a basketball game can agree on is that the officiating is horrible? Only trouble is, both teams think the officiating favors the OTHER team. How can that be? Must be our vantage point. From where I sit, I can clearly see each time someone fouls my team and doesn’t get the call. And from the yelling all around me, I know my fellow fans see it too. But I am blissfully unaware when the same happens to the opposing team. When I hear the other side of the stands protest, I wonder what all the fuss is about. Hmmm. It must be that I have selective blindness. I appear to be in good company – everyone else in the stands suffers from it, too.

Spaghetti dinners

On Thursdays during basketball season, the team heads over to one of the player’s houses after practice for a spaghetti feed. From the kid’s point of view, it’s a great chance to unwind and eat together before Friday night’s game. From a mom’s perspective it is a rare opportunity to imagine what it would be like to run a boarding house – madness. In 5 minutes, 20 teenage boys grab plates and load them up with spaghetti, garlic bread and brownies. They drink 5 gallons of milk in the blink of an eye. It is a whirlwind. Then, before you even catch your breath, they are gone. And all that remains is an untouched bowl of salad you were hoping they’d eat, but knew all along they wouldn’t.