Wow. Over a month since a true post. This isn't even in order - I still have to post about Boston. Well, since the pics aren't on my laptop and I'm too lazy to go post from my desktop, this will have to do. Besides, this is my blog, and it's one of the few places that I truly can control what does and does not happen. Ah, but I digress...
My boys seem to have fallen prey to a demon this season, a demon I inadvertently helped nurture. Such is coaching as I'm learning. Some things work well with one group that will be the demise of another. You win some and you lose some, and we're not just talking about the contests themselves, but the philosophical and strategic battles as well. You just have to win more than you lose, and not lose badly - usually.
As a kid, I personally wanted to be better than the kid people said was better than me. Each summer, my school and two neighboring elementary schools participated in a program that brought the three schools into one for summer classes. My class, and those of the other schools, constantly battled for who was better in basketball and football (baseball wasn't big there and it require too much stuff). I would get myself pumped up by telling myself that there was no way kid A was going to beat me. The last months of the regular school year, my classmates and I told ourselves that the other schools could do this better and we weren't going to let them win with that. We knew who the guy ahead of us was, and we reminded ourselves of it until we beat them. That was the way it was. Unfortunately, as I'm learning this season, it's not necessarily the way it is.
We have a team in our division that beat my kids a few times last year, most notably in the league championship. I didn't see how it happened since I had my own championship game to get ready for, but I knew of it and figured that they would and should be the measuring stick. We beat them this year, we'll be fine. So I came right out and said it - just as we would have done when I was their age (not that I'm that much older) - "If you don't work hard now, they are just going to beat you again." We had an easy game at the start of the season that we won, purely because we had better athletes, not necessarily on basketball skill. "If we play like that against the good teams like Team X, you're going to get beat by 50." Like I said, for me, that would have been enough to say to myself that I need to get it together and get serious because I owe them a good, solid proverbial punch in the mouth. Turns out that my team as a whole didn't respond that way.
We've played that team now five or six times now this season, and lost all but one (coach pulled his starters with 5 minutes left in the game because they were playing bad). Do we have the skills to beat them? Sure. They have one kid that will beat us and we know who it is and what we need to do to stop him. But we don't. Our energy on the defensive end is lackluster. Offensively we're stagnant. There is no heart, hustle, or pride. We pretty much lost all of those games before they had even started. Perhaps my little mind game backfired, and I turned this team into an "Untouchable" by using them as our measuring stick early in the season. The body language during these games is very 'blah' and we look like we're just sleepwalking. Yet while we were in Boston, even on limited sleep these boys were nothing but energy - so I know it's not a fatigue issue. We have two more potential meetings with this team, and they'll both be for championship titles and/or trophies. I have to find a way to vanquish this demon. Find some way to get these kids to face and destroy their fear. I have to find a way to get them so hungry to beat this team that we make sure nothing gets in our way and keeps us from them. Sounds like I better get started....
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