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Well I wish I could give a rags to riches story of our basketball team’s triumph over our opponents… but alas, we’ve been defeated! I’ve got a lot of excuses: we had a smaller team, we have a shorter team, we have a less talented team, we have a less experienced team, and on and on… but at the end of it all, I must say that I’m very proud of our guys.
Throughout the entire season starting back in October, I’ve been hammering into these guys that playing the game of basketball is NOT about the individual, but rather learning to play as a team – as one. When we started out, some couldn’t even make a layup, and the couple of hot-shots that we had did know a trap defense from a man to man.
I am happy to report that observing the final two games of the season, our Windermere boys really stepped up and pulled together. Each game had the same trend. We’d start off with a steal off of the press and either make or miss an easy layup – taking the lead early on. Then once the opponents had a chance to recognize our defense and run the ball on transition, the score would flop and soon we’d be down by as much as we had on the scoreboard.
A smaller team means you must have a more conditioned team, you have to want it more, and work harder than anyone else. At this we have a long way to go. There is a presiding tendency here on the island and perhaps throughout all adolescence to simply take the path of least resistance, or the easy way out. I must confess that I’m completely fed up with this attribute. We have perhaps only 1 player who strikes me as consistently working to the best of his ability; everyone else is just getting by.
Although the season was a bust and we only had the 1 win from 2011 tournament in Governors, our boys did improve on all aspects of the game. The hope is two fold; 1st, that next year’s team will be partially conditioned by this year’s and we’ll simply pick up where we left on, thereby making great strides in improvement; 2nd, that basketball is more than just a game – it becomes active discipleship whereby young men learn teamwork and virtue and integrity, that they would conduct themselves in a manner on the court which would honor our Lord, for its not always win our lose, it also about how you play the game.