If Basketball’s Not Your Thing, Try Bugs and Cartwheels

Allow me to confess my motive up front: My daughter Amanda is a plump 7-year-old who doesn’t run, jump or play enough to suit me. That’s the reason I signed her up to play in the Pee Wee basketball league at our neighborhood recreation center.

And, according to my wife, I don’t run, jump or play enough to suit her. That’s the reason I signed up to coach the Pee Wee basketball league at our neighborhood recreation center.

“It should be fun for the both of you to get out of the house and get some exercise,” reasoned my wife.

I was trapped and knew it, but it made sense. I could combine my favorite sport with quality time and exercise with Amanda. And that’s how I came to be the coach of the Green Dragons.

“But, Dad, I don’t like sports,” Amanda said as we arrived for the first day of practice. “Why are you always making me do things I don’t want to do?”

“You’re getting fat,” I said. Since she had asked, I told her the bitter truth. “You need to exercise more. Basketball will be good exercise for you.”

“Daaaddd!” she said, rolling her eyes the way little girls do.

Amanda is the only child of parents who don’t get much exercise themselves. But unlike our child, we lead active, stressful lives that we have convinced ourselves keep us from tipping the scales. Amanda--at 4 feet, 3 inches and about 100 pounds--was growing too old to explain it as “just baby fat.”

Basketball would be just the ticket to make her run and jump and sweat. I wasn’t wishing for her to be a reedy waif. Nor was it my expectation that she become a slam-dunking basketball star--though, that would be nice, if it happened. But who can truly count on a 7-year-old winning a college scholarship and recusing her parents from a second mortgage to finance education bills?

My role as a coach was another matter. Almost from the start, I visualized myself on the sidelines as Dean Smith of the Pee Wee League. In my mind’s eye, I would point out the plays and my daughter would execute them on the court. Later, I imagined, after the final seconds had ticked away, daughter and father would share a Coke and a smile.

Fast forward to the end of the season . . . we lost nearly every game, posting a 2-6 record.

Every Dragon player understood the concept of the game was to throw the ball into a basket, which had been lowered to eight feet in deference to their pint sizes. But they had no clue that they should do it as a team--coordinating all their running and jumping and shooting into an organized concept.

To our credit, few of the opposing teams were better. I am convinced that the fundamentals of basketball involve too much thinking for kids at this age. Their idea of basketball was to scatter all over the court and throw the ball in the air, hoping it might fall in the basket.

In fact that’s exactly how we earned one of our victories. In the fourth game of the season, as time was expiring in a 2-2 game, one little Dragon believed the game was over and tossed the ball in the air. It hit the backboard and rattled through the net as the buzzer sounded. A mild celebration followed with one player, who had been sitting on the bench for most of the second half, doing cartwheels across the floor.

Cartwheels, I learned, were a big deal with this tyke. For no reason that I ever understood until after the season, he would stop whatever he was doing and execute the most perfect cartwheel. In the middle of a practice or a game, it didn’t matter. Turns out, according to Amanda, he thought he was the Red Power Ranger.

I spent nearly an entire practice session showing everyone how to dribble and pass a basketball. But come game time, all the drills were forgotten as playing basketball became a game of everyone going in different directions, often away from whomever had the ball.

During one game, I pulled one little boy out of the game for a brief spell. He had just handed the ball to an opposing player in a white jersey, who promptly drove down court for an easy basket.

“Why did you give him the ball?” I asked. “Didn’t you see your teammate standing under our goal?”

“Oh, yeah, you’re right,” he said. “I forgot the guys in green are on my team.”

In another case, one little boy stopped dribbling at mid-court during a practice to peer down at the floor.

“Hey, guys, come here and look at this cool bug,” he said, tossing the ball away and dropping to his knees. In a rare display of team unity, all the other players broke from the zone defense I had just spent 10 minutes explaining and rushed to their knees to join the bug watcher.

As for Amanda, she got plenty of exercise. She even scored a point or two during a couple of games. Running up and down the court was boring to her.

One basketball season didn’t work wonders and she never learned to enjoy playing the game. “It was OK,” she said after our last game. “But I like playing basketball on Sega Genesis better.”