Kevin: Did not get the part in the musical; he’s in the chorus. All are ok with that. Glad he got the experience of going back to the call-back. He did qualify for State Solo & Ensemble, but, that’s one of the weekends we’ll be on vacation. We offered to stay (have him fly with one of us down to catch up) but he was pretty ok with just not doing it. Has his audition for the Okemos Philharmonic Orchestra (the main HS group) on Tuesday…..the scales he might have to perform are among the most difficult he’s been asked to do yet.
Christopher: We travelled out to Ionia (again) for the last regular season basketball game. We fell behind early, 12-5 after the first quarter, but, from that point on, we didn’t give up another point until there were 3 minutes left in the fourth quarter and breezed our way to a 25-18 win. Really remarkable that we held them without a point for that long. The Ionia team had something we haven’t had to deal with in a while; a player taller than Christopher (he was probably 2 inches taller….and at least 30-40 pounds heavier. Christopher looked svelte next to him).
Mom and Dad continue to be flummoxed and amazed by how well Christopher is doing; he held this kid to nothing, zip, zilch, zero while outrebounding him and scoring six points of his own. He caught the ball down low once and while being swarmed by the big dude and his teammates calmly dished the ball off to his wide open teammate for an assist; he stole the ball right out of the big guy’s hands after one rebound and was dribbling away when the kid shoved Cpher and picked up a foul; he came back to help break the press in the fourth quarter and did a great job of that.
Need to start considering more basketball camps for this kid.
Matthew: Another game of basket-rugby today but, surprise, they call the kids to the center of the court at the beginning of the game and say, hey, it’s game 4 of 8, we’re going to start calling more fouls, and travelling, and double-dribble. And the game looked more like basketball.
I think this is off one of the team’s set plays; the guard comes in towards the basket towards the middle and kicks it out to Matthew, who has moved out from under the basket to receive the pass. And then he drives in and tries to score.
This is a Matthew special…..he’s collected the rebound at the other end and is just hauling butt down court for the layup
It gets lost with his gigantic brother around, but, Matthew’s pretty tall. And this kid isn’t going to have a chance at making this shot….
The other team has rushed down for a lay-up and mishandled the ball; Matthew has collected it and is going to head down for a layup.
More of the same; this time with Austen setting a pick for him.
And the same rebound-layup drill as before
This game of basketball had one very different feature than the others, aside from the new presence of rule enforcement. The other team was coached by two of the college students who run the after school program at Bennett Woods; they only had six players today. I was dragooned to run the clock again, noticed this, and asked, hey, would you like Christopher to play?
They say sure, I call Christopher over, and Matthew’s team, all from Bennett Woods and all who know Christopher, start moaning, oh no, not him, that’s not fair.
The final score of the game was 36-20 for Matthew’s team; the end result was never really in doubt. Christopher kept the score from being 50-6…..
Matthew’s been a little mouthy recently that he’s better in basketball than Christopher. And in many respects it’s true; he dribbles better, and faster, and has a better shot. But the two half-quarters they played against each other proved one thing….Matthew may be all of that, but he has really no chance of scoring on his brother one-on-one. Cpher is quick enough to stop Matthew from doing just about anything….
….and Matthew doesn’t have much of a chance of stopping his brother from scoring either.
like always, they had a lot fun playing against each other…..there were a lot of smiles and laughing. Other players on Matthew’s team either a) flat out said they don’t want to guard Cpher or b) after having to guard Cpher for a while asked to move to someone else…
Christopher had ten points total and rebounds galore…..really, he probably prevented Matthew’s team from a lot more scoring opportunities just by scooping up every rebound. Cpher’s team best play was the airball from outside that Christopher would just grab as it came in and put the ball back up for the basket….
Most of these pictures are of Christopher on offense; it’s just the way the half went….the one notable time that Matthew had a rebound-and-go situation Christopher was right with him….and when Matthew pulled up for the shot and took it Christopher swatted the ball away so hard it ended up out of the court.
All that being said, Matthew had a great game, 8 points I think, and did about the best that anybody on his team is going to do against Cpher….at least he’s not afraid of standing up to him.
Cpher wasn’t thrilled with the game afterwards (you can’t steal the ball, you have to play man-to-man always, etc), but, it did let him do something that he doesn’t do much in his games….dribble with the ball.
