I Love Basketball :)

and markira said, let there be a blog post: and there was a blog post. and markira saw that there was a blog post, and it was about dang time.

Mark's team had their first game today. Mark has been waiting and waiting for basketball season to start, and then for the first game. So today was a pretty big deal for him.

First, some team background. We have 15 boys playing. 4 are 8th graders, two of whom have played all three years of busline (Mark is one). We have 4 6th graders, and 7 7th graders. Mark is the tallest on the team at 5'11", and also has excellent vertical leap, so he does the opening tip.

We played the team that won the championship last year. Most of that team was 8th graders, though, so they have a relatively young team this year. Which is okay, because so do we. We reallllllllly wanted to beat this team.

We didn't. We lost 40-38. Mark had a pretty good game, though.

He scored 24 points.

Yes. 24. Two dozen. And he had a bunch more shots that could have gone either way, but didn't happen to go in. Plus he did a TON of rebounding, and just basically dominated the court. It was pretty damn awesome to watch. (mama so proud, can you tell?)

He sat out maybe half of the third quarter because he had three fouls, and also because coach wanted to rest him a bit, since at that time our team had a six point lead. By the time Mark went back in, we were at a three-point deficit that we never recovered from. It was not from lack of trying, though! I counted at least four times that Mark landed on the floor during a particularly fierce play. This is not counting the time that he just kind of randomly tripped when nobody was anywhere near him, because he had been playing pretty much the entire game and he was pretty exhausted. He is going to be SO sore tomorrow!

What impressed me the most about Mark's game was his sportsmanship. He lost it very briefly in the fourth quarter, when he messed up and was mad at himself, but he shook it off in about a second and went back to taking care of business. But the rest of the time, he was very good. He didn't get all weird and self-congratulatory whenever he did something awesome, he just acted like nothing big had gone on and continued to play. He was very friendly to the other team, and in fact after the game was over, he and the top player of the other team did that hand-clasping-chest-bump thing that guys do.

I don't know if Mark will have another game this season where he scores like that. We may play better teams who will keep him from scoring. We may play much worse teams where Mark's play will be limited to let other players gain more experience. But this game, this first game of his eighth grade season, it was something to see. Way to go, baby! mk