I Said Lord, Lord, Lord, Lord (The Worst Youth Basketball Team in the History of Ever, And I'm a Coach)

My 6th grade son didn't make our competitive town basketball travel program this year. We tried to have him play on a CYO team (that's Catholic Youth Organization, for you heathens). It's halfway between rec and travel. Kids practice and play competitive games against other parishes. No tryouts, but you have to get your registration entered when they open the window for a short period. Emphasis on SHORT.

I missed the registration by one day. I got shut out. Another on-the-ball dad missed it as well, making me seem slightly less culpable to the missus. 24 kids signed up right away, so we got boxed out. But we were told by the parish's organizer that they would sponsor a third team if we got a group together. Thinking of our kids, but not thinking that we would have to get a group of 10-12 kids together, we said yes. And that's where my problems started.

I became enlisted as an assistant coach. We scraped and clawed among the detritus of the 6th grade to form a team. We needed boys that: i) didn't play travel, ii) didn't play on one of the two other CYO teams, iii) wanted to play basketball, and iv) had some semblance of skill. This proved to be impossible, with caveat iv being the deal-breaker.



We eventually cobbled together ten human sixth grade boys. It was essentially central casting for Ladybugs, Kicking and Screaming or any of the Mighty Ducks movies. But let's be clear - there were no Dangerfields, Ferrells, Estevi or Hollywood endings here.

The team included the following characters: 

1) an overweight boy with flatulence issues so intense it frequently disrupted practices.
2) the too-cool-for-school son of divorced parents who taught multiple kids on the team (including my son) what PornHub was all about. Saves me from that talk. I guess. This kid would also have sudden, urgent restroom needs whenever we started a drill he didn't like. He was the driver of most of the sprinting we made the kids do. Which was a lot.
3) a kid who struggled with competitiveness and dealt with it by dribbling non-stop with his head down, often while crying
4) two kids who often decided on their own during games to start shooting threes; they occasionally threw the ball over the backboard, and
5) a boy whose father is transitioning, but is still at heart an over-competitive parent. This parent often yells at the poor boy to hustle. LOUDLY. With a 100% deep, masculine voice coming from a person dressed as female and wearing make-up. Always a needle-scratch moment in the gym.



Fast forward to a Sunday in mid-February. Our team was 0-7. We'd lost every way possible: in OT; by 20; when we had a 9th grade older sibling play when we were low on numbers; when we played an all-5th grade team that talked shit so annoyingly that my son almost got into it with them afterwards (I supported him on this b/c they were true shitheads. It ended up being a good bonding moment b/c he thought I would be upset at him, and I supported him b/c he got in their face and told them off w/o crying or throwing punches.).

The point is this - we had one game left to pull off a miracle and get a W. The night before the game, I emailed the parents, attaching the link below, one of my favorite scenes from Glory. This movie introduced me to Denzel, and oh my sweet Lord, is he a force of nature in this. I told the parents via email to have the boys watch this to get pumped up. It was partially tongue-in-cheek. I got a total of one email back. It was from a parent who said they didn't get it. 

The clip didn't matter. We lost our last game 29-9 to a team that had a girl playing PG. The girl was awesome and sliced us up. The fact it was a girl probably stung a bit more to the 6th grade boys. Maybe I should've sent around a PornHub clip instead to motivate them. C'est la vie.