Savannah played winter league basketball at the local sports center. She improved a lot from last year (her first year), in which she never dribbled the ball during a game. She's still not very confident with dribbling but did a little bit this year. Her defense is still her biggest asset for her team and she's getting more aggressive. She also learned how to do screens this year. She made a few buckets too. It was a bit of a let-down for her from being on the winning team last year to only winning one game this year. Two of the 10 games were losses by just 1-2 points and two other games were just a 5-6 point loss. So about 4 of the 9 losses were pretty close. On their winning game, the score was 44-15! She missed one game due to sickness. Her team didn't even end up qualifying for play-offs and there weren't any consolation games this year, so that was a bummer. However, she enjoyed playing and going to practices and liked her teammates and coaches.
Owen played JV basketball on the school team. They had a pretty good season, with 15 of 20 wins. Owen didn't get to play much though (only played in 8 of the 20 games). He got 1-2 minutes in five of the games. In two of those games, he got in for the last minute simply by being the only one who said they wanted to play. The coach asked the bench if anyone wanted to go in. Owen responded and so the coach said, "Get in there." He didn't mind only playing for a minute. He was always ready and willing to play. He played a forward or center position when he went in. Like Savannah, he was also more useful on defense, being pretty scrappy going after the ball. He got 10-12 minutes in 3 games where they were ahead by quite a bit. In the last home game where he played the whole last quarter, he was just popping up 3's nearly every time he was open. He attempted about 5 three-pointers and finally made one. You could hear the sighs with the missed attempts and then the big cheer from the stands and his teammates on the bench when he finally got his 3-pointer.
Their team had a nice win by 1 point in one of their league games, which was really exciting. For the two cross-town rivals, they beat one team by 15 points and lost to the other one by 10 points. It was a pretty valiant effort in the loss, which they probably could have won if they had a few more favorable calls from the refs. That rival was expected to win that game by more than they did.
Owen was well-liked by his teammates and coaches. He always had a great attitude and very positive and energetic despite sitting the bench. He had a good relationship with his coaches and wasn't afraid to chat with them. The coaches at the end of the season banquet mentioned that most teenage boys don't talk very much, but we knew that didn't apply to Owen (who is often charming and friendly). Owen was the "ball boy" through the season too, with the responsibility of being in charge of carrying the balls around! We teased him a little about that, but he didn't mind being dubbed the trusted and responsible one. They didn't hand out individual awards this year, which we were hoping they would, because we knew he would have won the character award again. In one of the team meetings, some of the guys had gotten in trouble for jumping in the school pool after practice. During that reprimand, the head coach for the whole program said the boys needed to be more like Owen (do the right thing, show up, don't complain). That was the varsity coach who said that - not even his JV coach, so he has a good reputation amongst all the coaches. We're proud of him for working hard and always having a great attitude.
Here's a little bit from the coach's speech and recognitions:
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