DADvocate

My daughter, now a freshman in high school, had her first games this past Tuesday night. She's playing on the freshman and junior varsity teams. This is partly because few girls play basketball in her high school and partly because she's a pretty good player.

After her game Tuesday night she felt frustrated. She played only a minute or two in the jv game, no freshman game that night. She felt she is better than several of the girls that got a lot of playing time. After her game I told her she would just have to prove how good she is and I would help her out with some extra practice. Then I went and bought a new basketball for her.

She always hustles on the court, is well coordinated, and naturally ambidextrous which allows her to dribble equally well with either hand. Her passing skills may be the best on the jv team. She's also one of the tallest girls. Her greatest drawback is that she has a slender build and coaches like the bigger girls who they think will bang inside for rebounds. (She's not afraid to bang inside at all. When you have a 6' 3" 285 lb football player for a big brother, other girls on the basketball court don't scare you.)

Along with her slender build, she has remarkably long arms (which she inherited from me). This helps her quite a bit in basketball as she plays even taller than she is.

Last night, the jv game started out discouragingly. Daughter rode the bench as the team struggled to keep pace with their opponents during the first quarter. A minute or two into the second quarter, the coach put Julia in the game. Within 30 seconds of game time, she had blocked two shots and gotten a rebound. Her defense was outstanding, effectively guarding the lane and making a few steals. She also displayed speed and quickness I didn't know she had.

She played the rest of the game until the last minute. She score a couple of buckets including the one that brought the game to a tie. She led the team in rebounding and displayed her excellent passing skills. In a flurry of scoring during the last 3 minutes, my daughter's team won the game.

When she came off the floor, her coach hugged her around the head plus she got lots of high fives and "atta girls". Frankly, I was amazed. She proved to everyone in that gym she was a high level player.

The varsity coach has been rotating players off the jv team to dress out with the varsity. My daughter dressed with the varsity for her first time and got to play 3-4 minutes (the girl in white in the picture above) and scored her first points in a varsity game.

Afterward, when I congratulated her on her performance, she simply grinned at me and said, "I told you I was good." Yes, you are. You're good in more ways than you know.