As we were getting ready for the work & school day on this morning, I asked Alexa to play the Rocky theme music; tonight would be my son’s championship game! We followed this up with All I Do Is Win, We Ready, We Will Rock You… you know, some music to get you pumped up! I was chatting with my brother later that morning about this game; I said if there was a line on it, because, you know, we’re degenerates, my son’s team would be 8-9 point underdogs. My wife was worried… knowing how well my son takes losing… that a loss in this game would certainly be devastating. It would be… but that’s OK. Win, lose… either way, for his first season, where he didn’t really play that much, the most important thing, is to learn from it. Let’s get on to the night’s lesson.
First off, let’s set the stage. The gym was packed with fans from both teams. There was a really good turnout of students from my son’s school; it was great to see that support. They did the player introductions. They called my son’s name, and he ran out there; so cool. Then we all stood and removed our hats, as they played the national anthem. This IS the big time!!! I joked with some of the other dads that I didn’t see the ESPN truck outside… then we wondered about the halftime show; spoiler alert: there was no halftime show. But they did play music during the timeouts, etc… it was really cool. On to the game…
First shot was by the other team, this really tall kid stroked a 3 pointer like a fricking pro; I thought we were in big trouble. Yet, the first half played out exactly as it needed to. Our kids made shots, they played defense, their kids missed a bunch of shots. We lead at the half 12-7. If you told me that coming into this game that we would be leading at the half, I would have not believed you. Yet here we were… the fans were into the game, we were winning… we got a chance here, right? Well… it was the tale of 2 halves. In the 2nd half, we couldn’t buy a bucket; we scored 3 points the entire 2nd half… that wouldn’t get it done against most teams, let alone the #1 team. And it wasn’t the kid that made the first three, but another one that killed us. He was splitting defenders, driving to the bucket, drawing the contact, making the shot… he was easily the best player on the court. Final score was 25-15 the wrong way. There were plenty of tears after the game; besides my son, I saw maybe 4-5 kids crying. I told my son in the car ride home: Give me all those kids that were crying on my team any time. They really care about winning.
It wasn’t meant to be on this evening, although the team still did get a really cool trophy after the game. As one of his teammates said, first is the worst, second is the best… haha. The final part of that one is: third is the one with the hairy chest. I love all this stuff these kids come up with… Until next year.
Leave a Reply