King's Bounty and Basketball

First off my take on the King's Bounty sequel was posted Friday. Fun game.

Ashley's first basketball game was Saturday and her team lost 22-7.

At this age all it takes is one girl who is taller than everyone else, can actually get the ball TO the rim, and get all of the rebounds to turn a game into a route. Basically the other team had a 10 year old version of Kareem. And when half the girls still don't know what defense really means...that's a recipe for...well for 22-7.

Ashley is the point guard and she had a blast. She did get an assist and she played really good defense and I have never seen her so INTO a game before. Soccer is different for her. I get the feeling she actually enjoys basketball whereas soccer is just something to do with her friends.

Mary and I are doing a good job, we think, of not being "those parents." You know the parents who tell the coach what to do, yell at the kids from the bleachers and generally act like a 3rd grade girl's basketball game is Game 7 of the NBA Finals.

If you do not have kids let me assure you: these people exist and they must be weeded out of the gene pool for the sake of our survival.

But Mary and I both have basketball backgrounds so when we are watching practice and the coach is telling the kids to set a screen by basically acting like they are boxing out with their arms extended, which in every form of basketball is highly illegal, it's hard to bite my tongue. But I do. When I coached soccer I KNOW I was likely messing stuff up and I would have felt like crap if Mr. Soccer Star came up to me and told me I was doing stuff horribly wrong. But damn...teaching illegal screens?

So we both just sit there and clap and encourage the kids as best we can because regardless -- Ashley is loving it and Mary already informed me after the first practice that we were both coaching next year.

Knowing Mary, I bet she'll have them running suicides.