My Week On the Brink - Friday

My Week On the Brink concluded Friday afternoon with awards, goodbyes and exhaustion. After my two-hour trip home, I collapsed into a long nap that will throw off my sleep schedule for days. It is ironic that sitting around makes you the most tired, but that is what happened Friday.

Friday was Play Day. No learning stations, but lots of contests and games. We even allowed some full court scrimmages which the kids love and coaches hate (I'll get back to this in a moment). Because there is so much playing, the coaches spent much of the day keeping score and organizing rather than coaching. It also means we spend much of the day on our backsides rather than burning calories as drill instructors. It has taken 30 years to learn it, but nothing wears me out like doing nothing. My body does not like a day that does not include a little sweating and exercise. When I got home yesterday afternoon from my final day of camp, I was less celebratory and more sleepy.

Full court basketball is true basketball, but it quickly falls apart with 5th graders. They stop running up and down the floor, stop using any cuts or screens and stop passing the ball entirely. Rather than refereeing the contest like I was supposed to be, I spent most of the game yelling, "Move!" at stationary kids with frustrated faces about their lack of touches. Talk about driving me to the brink - the kid who refuses to budge to get open but then whines about not getting a pass drives this coach crazy.

The next step in this basketball regression is that since nobody is moving to get open, the kids start driving into multiple defenders to throw up terrible shots. This has several negative effects that demonstrate why coaches often prefer working in half court situations. The defense realizes that there is no passing, so they all chase the ball. Defensive principles - out the window. On top of that, since it is so rare to touch the ball in this setting, there emerges an "I'm going to get mine" mentality of taking a shot no matter how far away or defensively contested. You can see it on the face of the kid who has not had the ball in a while and suddenly comes upon it. The face says, "I don't care if all of you a**holes are wide open, I'm taking this shot and there is nothing you can do about it." Finally, with kids forcing drives into traffic, the games quickly becomes a whine-a-thon of, "That's a foul!" No referee, let alone coach pretending to be one, is going to call a foul when a player drives into four defenders, but that is tough to explain to an angry eleven-year old.

Much of the day was spent figuring out the Campers of the Week. Yes, more prizes. COTW is awarded to one kid in each group who "embraces the camp." It is kind of like porn - you know it when you see it. For my group, one kid was clearly the most competitive, encouraging and ready to try new things. There was one group with several worthy candidates and another without a real strong one. Of course, they all think they might win it. They cling to that one time they yelled, "You can do it, Ben" and forget about the time they refused to shake someone's hand after a game or threw food across the table at lunch. I caught one kid's eyes welling up after he did not get my award. The kid was probably my second choice, but he got upset with a teammate and refused to play in our cutthroat game for several minutes. At that point, minus the rest of the group openly rioting or denying the Holocaust, he was not going to win Camper of the Week.

One of Coach Stroupe's best touches is not getting trophies or plaques for the winners. Instead, the winners get basketballs and dribble glasses (you can see forward, but not down so as not to look at the ball while you dribble). The last thing these kids need is a meaningless trophy, but it is amazing how many of them cherish that basketball.

As much as I vent and complain about aspects of the camp, it usually succeeds in renewing my basketball batteries. I'm already thinking ahead to the up-coming season and what I want to focus upon after seeing new things from other coaches this week. The money, for me anyway, was minimal after filling up the Civic tank twice to get from Chattanooga to Knoxville, but much of the week is invaluable. Being around good kids. Being around good coaches. Being around the best sport known to man.

It almost sounds like I want to do it again, which explains, I guess, why I keep coming back to basketball camp year after year.