Blessings in a Backpack

Today was our annual team service project, packing food for the Blessings in a Backpack program at South Wayne Elementary School. After a slow start (who could have predicted dead batteries in BOTH of our mini-bus vehicles?), we made it to the school and had a good experience, talking and laughing while we stuffed over 200 bags with food designed to take the edge off of the hunger so many of those students experience over the weekends. It is simultaneously sad, yet heartening, when we consider what we're doing and why we're doing it. In a perfect world, no child would ever go hungry.

Because of the initial delay, we only had about 45 minutes of practice time left once we returned to school. The upside of having only 13 players is that we can get a lot more reps in over a shorter period of time. The downside is obvious - we're going to struggle to field both a varsity and a JV squad most nights. Two or three players makes the difference between everyone playing a lot vs. a good number of our younger kids suffering from a lack of playing time. I am very disappointed that we have not been able to sustain the typical 18-20 players we normally have. I guess there are lots of reasons why it's happening, but I don't think I buy most of them. The bottom line is that we have 13 kids who are playing hard and improving every night. The girls who have chosen to not play are providing more time for personal attention for the girls who are. We're going to serve them as well as we can, and I think the level of improvement we'll see this year will be very apparent.

Our practice time has been maximized by the addition of The Gun 8000. It's a computerized rebounding/passing machine that allows our shooters to get off dozens of shots in a short period of time without the typical rebounding/chasing that we've done in the past. Thanks to the generous support of Dr. Steve Hatch, we've got a new weapon in our practice arsenal. Some of our kids even stay after practice just to get a few more shots. It's pretty cool, and we really appreciate how useful it has been.

The jamboree is next Tuesday. We're looking forward to matching up against someone else, although I'm not sure how prepared we will be. This year will see a lot of teaching and (hopefully) learning. Our goal, as it always is, will be to have our team ready for a good tournament run. If we stay healthy, we will be fine.