B-Baller

I had a great aversion to organized sports as a child and made it my business to become invisible during game days in gym class.

If we were playing dodge ball - and we always were - I would cower in the back of the court until my number was up, hoping against hope that I didn't get hit in the face, chest, or rear. These were by far the three biggest danger zones, but strictly speaking, there is no graceful way to exit a dodge ball game.

During softball season, I was the kid picking flowers in the outfield and praying that the ball did not come within a ten foot radius of my person, lest I be forced to catch it or, more horrifying still, decide where to throw it next.

Soccer was the most benign of the sports evils because you could stand around looking vaguely occupied and pre-emptively skedaddle when the ball started heading in your general direction.

The P-Dawg, who spent his youth league years hiding in the broom closet, also confirms having had a great disdain for organized sports.

Which is why we were both surprised to find that the little V-meister has been dreaming of becoming a baller and dying to join the junior Lithuanian basketball league which meets in the church gym on Saturday afternoons.

If you've never had the opportunity to watch a group of five and six year-olds play basketball as I did yesterday, I would highly recommend it on the basis of entertainment value alone. The aspiring athletes did fairly well with the dribbling, passing, and blocking drills, but things started falling apart about thirty minutes into practice when the scrimmage game began.

There were about three kids who actually knew how to play, and the rest of the motley crew traveled up and down the court on their periphery, like electrons spinning around an atom's nucleus. Every once in a great while, a proton or neutron would accidentally gain control of the ball, and then one of two things would happen:

1. He/she would stand paralyzed until someone came up and plucked it clear out of his/her hands.
   
   
2. He/she would take off running in the wrong direction.

For us parents watching from the sidelines, it was excruciating. Periodically, you would hear someone screaming instructions like, "PASS IT! PASS IT!", "Other way! OTHER WAY!" and "Take your hands out of your pants!"

The V-meister, for her part, was an enthusiastic though cautious participant, running up and down the length of the court on the exact same trajectory (just inside the sideline), but never attempting to take control of the ball or receive a pass. Whenever her team scored, she would shout "Yea!" and do a little jig. Every once in awhile when playing defense, she would remember what Coach Cliff taught her about blocking and randomly stick her arms up in the air - never mind the fact that there was no one from the opposing team, or any team, anywhere in her general vicinity.

But she loved it. She has advised us that she wants to play again next week, and is requesting that the P-Dawg install a net in our driveway so she could practice every day.

I'm proud of her. Basketball is the most entertaining and least offensive of the ball-centric sports.

Still, she must have gotten a recessive gene.



(I was too busy screaming from the sidelines to take any pictures of the game, so here's a random gratuitous V-meister shot, just for the heck of it.)