My first season as basketball coach is over.  We ended up with a record of 6-6.  Not bad.  Four of the losses we got murdered with no fault to our guys. Those schools have these amazing basketball programs with coaches who are coaches, not just some dad (or step-dad in my case) of some kid on the team.  Two of our losses were against a team we could have beat and all the wins we had were one's we shouldn't have lost anyways. 

 

Middle school basketball isn't like the NBA where on any given day the worst team can beat the best team.  Some schools are just so small with no kids to pick from and they have to play huge schools where only the best kids are allowed to play. 

 

We fell in the middle - not a huge school, but not the teeny schools.  So even though we couldn't play team basketball very well, we could beat some teams with individual skills or height alone.

 

I had a ton of fun – mainly due to the kids being pretty fun.  Working with 6^th - 8^th graders is very enjoyable cause for the most part they are still kids.  They are still mainly out to have fun and not be the coolest crap in town.  Hopefully I'll be able to do this next year.  I'd actually be able to go into the season kinda knowing what I'm doing.  

 

Ultimately what I wanted to bring to this team was a focus on Christ.  Like, to stay Christ-like when you're called for traveling, or if you're fouled and it's not called, or being encouraging to other players if the screw up or do well. 

 

Like who stinking' cares about the score at a Christian school?  I know God doesn't.  He cares about the kids.  One team has to score more, and one less.  It's not like the most righteous teams out there always win over the evil teams.  The only score God cares about is how Christ-like you are on the court, bench, bleachers, school, home, work, wherever. 

 

So yeah, that's my inspirational coach speech for today - Be Christ-like in any situation you're in.  And hopefully your situation isn't like being an assassin or something cause it'd be hard being Christ-like when you're killing someone for money. 

 

Go team!