Today was a day away from the office and homefront. Dana’s high school basketball team is now at camp at Southwest Missouri State University (former home of basketball star Jackie Stiles). The camp is a chance for a whole bunch of the Shawnee Mission South kids to play together during the off-season. And since the school’s coach can’t work with them in the off-season, we are working with a coach-for-the-week.
And what a coach. Eddie Robinson (formerly with the Charlotte Hornets) is coaching our girls this week. He is here by God’s grace. We met Eddie when we turned to a recruiting agency to help us with Dana’s college search. Eddie has been working with Dana for nine months. And when the opportunity arose to coach Dana and her team for a couple of days, Eddie agreed. The girls are working very hard and learning a great deal.
The girls will be working their tails off. They had two games tonight. They will have six games tomorrow. And, if things work out, they’ll have two more games on Thursday. Wow! What a lot of work. So my job will be to make sure that all the girls are hydrated and rested.
So how did the girls do tonight? Well, we got here at 4:00 and had our first game at 7:15. The girls played well, but not spectacularly. They were very solid on defense. And the offense was sufficient for the competition. But the competition in the first game was not very strong. So the girls didn’t work their hardest. They won by over thirty, but they looked sluggish. The second game was better – but they will need to step it up if they expect to win the tournament.
Dana did well. But as her Dad, I am not the most unbiassed observer. A couple of the younger girls had very noteworthy games. Elizabeth played well defensively and showed some real promise on the boards. Peyton showed why she will be making a big difference on the inside. The upperclassmen played solid. Kelcie had some really sweet coast-to-coast fast breaks. And Whitney was all over the court defensively. Even Laura Dopp got in on the action. She had a couple of really good shots from the baseline.
All in all, it was a great start. Let’s hope that tomorrow goes even better than tonight
-CyclingRoo-