Basketball!

It's Winter.  That brings a lot of indoor time with it.  But in the last couple years the kids have decided another sport was in order so they're all playing basketball.  ALL of them.  Even 6-year-old Seamus!

I think Tara is playing too.  She keeps telling me she's on a team.  But I've yet to take her to a practice or a game yet.  So I'm not certain what the deal is there.  This is the kind of attention you get in a 4-child household.  You want undivided attention then go be an only child somewhere!

Anyway.  Basketball.  Both Denis and Liam play a brand of BB that would at least be recognizable.  They dribble, pass, shoot, etc.  Sure they take free throws from a spot a foot or more closer to the basket, but that's about it.  Essentially the same game you see on TV.

For Seamus?  Well.  What he plays is about as close to basketball as throwing a tennis ball around the community pool is close to water polo.  In other words not so close at all.  First of all, dribbling is clearly optional.  Some kids try to give it an effort - usually with two hands at a time - and that's not so bad.  But other kids forget it completely.  They just pick the ball up and run!  Secondly; the ball.  It's about the size of a decent melon.  And about the same color come to think of it!  It's small enough that your average 5th grader could palm it.  What else?  Lesse, Thirdly there's the defense.  You're familiar with a "3 second" violation?  When the offense camps out under the basket for too long?  When in the bizarro world of Kindergarten BB the defense is required to camp out!  They can't come outside the box to defend at all.  So you end up with 5 kids all acting like chained up junkyard dogs.  If any kid is crazy enough to venture near the box with the ball they jump at him gnashing their teeth as he/she stops just outside their reach.  Oh, and finally the basket is lowered 2 feet to 8 feet.

So in other words it's about an much entertainment as anyone could possibly stand at 9am on Saturday morning.  I go to the game tired and grumpy and leave with a huge grin on my face.

Seamus joined the team late.  They were already halfway through their season when I relented and let him join.  I'm not really a fan of organized sports at that age, but after a month of snow anything that gets him out of the house and lets him run around and burn off steam is a good thing!  So he's never played before, and the team is already fully formed.  No worries according to the coach.  He'll fit right in.

I picked him up after the first practice, and the coach happily announced to me that (of the 10 players they had) Seamus was one of the top 4!  This was a little bit of a surprise to me.  I know he's a mean soccer player, but for his first practice that is pretty impressive.  Coach went on to tell me that he made this assessment by watching him shoot.  Until Seamus arrived they only had 3 kids who could get the ball all the way up to the rim.  And Seamus can do that just fine.  So Voila!  He's in the top 4!

This last weekend everyone had games.  Mimi and I split duties.  I took Seamus to the early game, and she took Liam and Denis to the later ones (so I could stay home and work on taxes - yay).

It was a banner weekend for the McGrath boys.  Seamus' team (though they don't keep score) won handily, and Seamus scored his first ever basket!  Liam's team lost a close battle, 24-22, but Liam scored as well.  He probably scores in 1/3 of the games.  So that's pretty cool.  Denis' team won easily also, and while Denis very rarely scores (gets that from Dad!) he picked up a point in this one!  There was much rejoicing!  Next weekend will bring new excitement to be sure, but for now I'm just going to enjoy one weekend of success for all my boys!