School Spirit

Deary, deary me…

It’s been almost three years now since I first found myself wandering into the local basketball stadium to watch two of the kids play a game or two of their first season of Under 10 basketball. The little feller asked me, paraphrased a little but very close to the true words, ‘Mr V, you’ve gotta come watch me play basketball!’

To which I honestly replied, ‘mate, I don’t like basketball!’

To which he honestly replied, ‘yeah, but you like me!’

I don’t know if he realised it then, but he had me hook line and sinker right then and there. I’ve probably watched 95% of all of his matches since, now.

Which leads me to this afternoon. After nearly three years, and this kid now starting Under 14s (although he and the other little feller I watch in the team are still yet to turn 12), I ended up sitting behind the scoring bench for the first time. Buttons! Fair dinkum, buttons everywhere! So many buttons, so few fingers, so little real understanding of the game beyond ‘ball goes through hoop, cheer like mad!’ Thankfully I knew the parent from the other team who was doing the paperwork side of things and she (and one of the kids who gave me a few pointers first) helped me get an adequate grip on what was going to happen.

In short, bedlam.

Well… pressing the score button twice on either side when they got a goal, I could do that pretty well. If one team was called for a foul, yep, no worries. Press the foul button. Only stuffed that up once. But then there’s this thing called ‘can we have a sub, please?’ Not a dirty great boat that floats underwater. Not a blatantly American apparently health food restaurant with rather aggressive advertisement campaigns (my opinion) which nonetheless taste fantastic! No. Asking for a sub means they want a subsitute. They’re gonna grab three of their mates and kick them to the bench and take their place.

And they wanted these ’subs’ every single time I thought I just about had a handle on this score box with all the buttons!! Every single time! I swear to anybody who cares enough to listen that one of the little fellers was doing it deliberately to see me fret!

Anyway… we got through it in the end and the kids won by ten goals with a score line of 13 to 33, and even better, at the very end my score on the board (and the foul count!) matched perfectly her score on the official score sheet! Success!!

When the kids (the two who know me – it’s taking a little while yet for the rest of the team to grow accustomed to this strange bloke who turns up each match to watch even though none of the kids are related to him in anyway whatsoever…) congratulated me on getting through unscathed, I must admit I whispered quietly to them along the lines of ‘thanks, boys, but I’m off to find a stiff drink, eh?’

They understood, bless them!

So on the way home, I had to stop by the local bottle-o cos I had no cans of scotch in the fridge at home any more. And when I got there, I had to buy a slab because buying just one wasn’t economical. So yes, the kids lead me to drink. Well… no. They were just there…

If you’re all decent, well-balanced people out there, I’m sure you’d all agree with me in principle though, eh? Right?

But to be fair, the basketball was the reason for the one scotch I ‘needed’. The one scotch was the excuse for the slab!

Related posts: Coaching Under 12s… the final cricket match of the season.

Technorati tags: basketball, kids sport.