The new # 71 OR fight! fight!

Ok, maybe I'm not so good at paying attention to the post count on the "dashboard." And it wasn't really a fight, it was really just me calling out T's coach about the amount of playing time my kid gets. Here's the story:

T had a basketball game yesterday. He did start the game, and came out about two minutes into the first quarter. He started the second quarter, too, and came out after about two minutes. Then he just sat there, looking disgusted and dejected. (MT, who had the day off from work and was attending his first game, was furious. He wanted to go get T and go home.) T's tiny minutes wouldn't bother me if there were lots of other kids on the team and everyone was being subbed in and out of the game. That was not the case, though. There were only seven kids there from our team, five of whom are on the floor at any given time. So there were some kids who never sat down, and there was T who sat down most of the time.

I realize that my son is not the best player on the team. This is not a competitive league; there is no prize for the team that wins the most games. Every kid on every team gets a trophy at the end of the season. This is a learning league. Sadly, our coach is not a very good teacher, and obviously not a very good master of making sure all the kids get pretty equal playing time.

So at halftime, as the coach was walking over to the side of the gym where the parents sit, I decided to have a word. I'm sorry to say that I probably wasn't very polite, although I did not use any bad words. I just told him that he needed to do a better job of managing his rotation of kids into the game. "But I started him," he says. "Yes, that's nice," I replied. "Then you pulled him out after maybe two minutes of play and he sat out the rest of the quarter. Same with the second quarter. All I'm asking you to do is give him a chance to play." I really did say those things, just maybe in a slightly raised voice. Slightly.

The result was that T played the entire third quarter. That wasn't my intention, but there you go. Another thing that came about was that T was no longer invisible to the other kids on the team. For the first time, they passed the ball to him and encouraged him during time outs and between points. It was almost like a real team. They were high-fiving each other and talking to each other - I've never seen it happen before. I usually only see one kid telling the others, "Just give the ball to me."

In the end, T's team won 11-8. T took a couple of shots, stole the ball once, got a rebound, made a couple of passes, and fouled a few times, too. He was in the game. He was involved in the game, not just watching. And it felt good to him and it was nice for us to see it, too.