The Road to Zero Gravity: The Invitation

This Spring season, now that I have my own team to coach and opportunity to compete in a national event, I only found it fitting to record some of the events and the journey relating to it just as I did last Spring for the 17U team. The difference is that I'm starting a little earlier, since I know that I'm going. The next few blogs (and there will be a few between now and then) will be my attempt to have my first blog "series".  I'm not really up on all the blog lingo, so I'm not sure if that's even a legitimate thing or if it already has an uber cool name - but whatever. And now the world premier of...

The Road to Zero Gravity

(So yeah, that's not the most original title ever but I couldn't come up with anything. Open to suggestions though...)

Whether it's by rule or my own competitive nature and disgust with paying your way into things like this, I made it clear that we had to earn our ticket and invite. No trying to get by with a big enough check, sliding in as the New Jersey extension of the Zero Gravity circuit, or that we were sending so many other squads and we should just get to ride their coat tails. Though I'd be pissed about being the only coach not going, if we didn't get our invite, my team and I would be sitting at home doing nothing while the rest of the program was having a blast in Foxborough. In order to get the invitation, you had to win your division in a Zero Gravity event, and we had three on our schedule.


Event 1 - Hudson Valley Showdown

This event is one of those things that got lost in that period where my mind was a complete mess. It was early in the season and we were having rudimentary problems that just left me quite quite dumbfounded.  We made the drive and at times played terribly. The team was down on itself, from the top down. The good thing that came out of it, was all the driving gave everyone plenty of time to reflect. In our final game of the tournament with nothing to play for, we met and came to the consensus that everyone would find a way to help turn this ship around. We ended the meeting with the agreement that we were going to help the team we were playing, know that they could go home right after the game like us (we overheard a few of the parents talking about how inconvenient it was that they wouldn't know for a few hours whether they would advance - and we can't have inconvenienced parents, can we). Sure enough, we played our best game to that point and found new life, a renewed sense of confidence, and an enormous weight was lifted.

Event 2 - Spring Crossover

While things may have been a struggle between these two events (hence the Rocky Road post and lack of posts in between), we never what we wanted to do. We needed to win our division if we wanted to go to Foxborough, and we were running out of opportunities. We recognized that we let one slip away, and found ourselves working harder in the weeks coming up to it.  The week leading up to the event, we eliminated the distractions that had plagued us the weekend before. We came out and just balled like we were on a whole different planet. Ball movement was amazing, defense was suffocating, and we were hitting just about every shot that went up...at least during pool play.  Once we advanced out of our pool and got into the playoffs, the shooting seemed to cool off, which got in some of our heads and other things got a little sloppy. Nonetheless, we held it together enough to advance into the championship and earn our bid. Unfortunately, we ran into a beast in the championship and lost.

Event 3 - Garden State Classic

This event really didn't mean much for us in terms of getting an invitation, but we approached it as another opportunity to test ourselves against others who wanted to get their invitations and play on a national stage. In  essence, this was for confidence purposes. We finished the tournament well, but started off a little too sluggish and didn't get to advance out of our pool. We learned a lot about ourselves that weekend, and ultimately that's all we wanted from the event anyway (2 invites doesn't really mean much, it's like having 2 copies of the same movie).

Tournaments after our invite was secured served only as a way to build momentum leading into our national event. That momentum would be invaluable as most of these guys have never been on a national stage, and would need all the confidence, swag, or whatever the term you've coined for it is. Will we be the cartoon snowball that gains size, strength, and crushes all in its path? Tune in next time to find out!