scaqabout: Basketball and a Winter Idiot

Q&A are playing basketball on Okemos Community Ed teams again this year. It's a lot of fun and they have really great coaches. They each have one practice a week and a game on Saturday. Games are eight minute quarters with a substitution at four minutes, so every kid gets approximately equal playing time. This year Quinn's age group is playing four on four; I'm not sure why.

They do not officially keep track of score in Quinn's games, I suppose to keep the focus on fun and learning, although some of the kids always think they know the score. The unofficial score this week, according Quinn (he's likes numbers so it's likely that he's right), was 22 to 26, with Quinn's team on the losing end. Quinn's ball handling is getting quite a bit better this year, and he's doing a nice job of grabbing rebounds and quickly following with shots. He took several shots this game, and a couple of them sunk.

Here he's grabbed a lose ball after a missed shot, and is getting ready to take it back to the basket.

Quinn is really good at sticking with his quarry on defense. By the way, those black and yellow things on his feet are his brand new Reezigs. We tried, but they have their own ideas, you know.

This was Abbey's third game of the season. In her age group they are keeping track of score, and the games can be pretty intense. They won their first game quite easily, lost the second game in a really close 22-20, and tied 22-22 in this week's game. They even played 2 minutes of overtime, but the tie remained. Abbey is among the taller of the girls on the court, and has a pretty good shot. I think she made two or three shots this game. Like Quinn, she plays a really tough defense, and is starting to get comfortable with fighting for rebounds under the basket.

Here she's grabbed a rebound and is heading down court.

On the move to receive a pass, we can see her taped fingers. Rebounding can be painful. It's still swollen and turning purple, but she got through her piano lesson tonight without Mrs. Black taking notice.

This is the Winter Idiot. This guy lives in our neighborhood and we see him out bicycling all the time. Can't he figure out that cycling is a seasonal sport? Sunday morning the low here was -9 degrees F! In the afternoon the sun shone and the temperature rose to 10 degrees, so the guy rolls his bike out his back door, flies off his deck through a big snow drift, and pedals down the sledding path through the ditch in front of his house, shouting something about training and riding in the woods and pedaling to the pump track as he raced off down the snow-packed street. Idiot. The pump track is covered in 8 inches of unpacked snow with a hard crusty layer on top. He couldn't ride there even though he tried.