I wasn’t planning on doing a post about basketball but realized after the first practice I wanted to write down how happy and excited I was for Christopher.
Since I volunteered to be the asst coach I had a chance to look at the scores from the tryouts…..I wasn’t very surprised to see that Christopher was average or below average in most categories but one (that category was ‘height’…he max’d that one out). That’s ok, those categories were ‘speed’, ‘agility’ and the like and well, that’s going to happen.
Suzanne and I have talked about how it’s becoming more and more obvious in soccer that “one of these things isn’t like the others” with Christopher…..and looking at the tryout results I was a little concerned about that as we headed into the first practice.
As I told Suzanne afterwards “I shouldn’t have been worried…he was awesome!”. I just need to remember what I always say…it seems to take Cpher a little time to get comfortable with a sport.
They start the practice just shooting around…his form is ok, but, it’s not great, and I’m sure they are going to work on that. They move to the traditional ‘lightning’ drill…..you’re at the free throw line and the front person shoots, and the second person shoots, and if the person behind you makes it before you do (after rebounds, if you miss), you’re out. This drill favors the better shooters and the agile.
Christopher was the last one out; he finished second. Can’t ask for much more than that. Did suicides at the end of the practice; finished 4th or 5th (out of 10)…can’t ask for much more than that….these aren’t supposed to be his strengths and he’s doing well at them.
His strengths should be playing inside, doing the rebounding and the second shots….and in the scrimmage he did a lot of that. Grabbed the ball and went right back up with the shot; he didn’t do a lot of that last year (wasn’t aggressive enough really) but he was aggressive and knew where he needed to be and what to do here. He was passing and looking the defender off of his passes (just amazed me he did that…looked one way and passed the other). A very pleasant 90 minutes of athleticism from Cpher that I wasn’t really expecting……and am just crazy happy that it did happen.
