She shoots, she scores

I love sports. Anyone who knows me knows that. And as I am sure my wife will tell you, I sometimes get carried away. I invest a tremendous — if not occasionally ridiculous — amount of emotional capital into sports. For example:
1. I threw my back out in 1995 celebrating the Braves winning the World Series. (I was at Game 6, so I was doubly pumped.)
2. Two of my friends were watching a Bama game with me recently when they made a wager on whether I would accidentally put my hand into the ceiling fan above me if we scored.
3. I see nothing wrong with being lifted in the air by another man, assuming your cornerback just picked off a critical interception.
4. A friend and I once had a very serious conversation on how many years off our life we would forego if the Minnesota Vikings’ Gary Anderson would miss a field goal in 1999. (It will cost us both four years.)
That said, all of my excitement and zeal for sports was totally trumped last weekend when I experienced the single greatest moment in my sports fan career: watching my 7-year-old make a basket.
Allie is playing on a basketball team for the first time, and the first time she touched the ball, she dribbled a few times, stopped, popped and dropped. (That’s sports fan talk for made a basket. Aren’t I hip?)
She has loved basketball for a while. We go out in the driveway and shoot hoops all the time, and she has gotten pretty good at making baskets, even on a regulation 10-foot goal. (Per edict from the commissioner, I am no longer allowed to swat her shot out of the air and scream, “YOU GOTTA BRING MORE THAN THAT IN HERE!!!”) Our usual game is HORSE, although she will often try and amend the game to HORSES mid-play, the little weasel.
When she decided she wanted to play on a team, I was excited, as she is at the age where she can really enjoy getting into team sports. She played soccer when she was 5, but her main strengths were cartwheels and hugging people she knew on the other team. I was pretty sure she was ready to advance to the next level.
At the game, I try not to be THAT dad. You know, the one whose mood for the next week will depend on whether or not his kid’s team wins. I am just excited to see Allie playing and having a good time. I did tell her that winning = dinner, but that’s just a little incentive. Ha! Little sports dad humor. They don’t even keep score, so how would she know if she won or not? (She’ll know based on whether she gets dinner.) Ha! Little more sports-dad craziness there.
At the game, I try to cheer and encourage but not to coach her too much from the bleachers. After all, that’s why she has a coach, and he does a great job of teaching the kids about the game and teamwork. Granted, at her first scrimmage, I did slide over to the bench and remind her that just because she was not on the court, it did not mean that she should hold animated meetings about Hannah Montana or Chick-fil-A or whatever it was with her teammates. Watch the game, for crying out loud.
She eventually got her head in the game during the scrimmage (only one cartwheel on the court), so I was excited about the first real game. The coach has numbers assigned to each player and calls out the play to the players each time down court. When I heard “1-4,” I was excited, because we originally were going to name Allie “4.” No, wait, it was because Allie was playing the 4-position, so that meant that she would get the ball, dribble a couple of times and throw one up. When the ball hit her hands, I was just happy to see that it didn’t go through her hands and smack her in the nose, because I know quite well that tends to put a damper on a basketball game with her.
One of the more humorous times in the game was when she was on defense. Allie is one of the smaller kids in the league, as the age range starts at 7 and goes to, from what I can tell, 32.
At one point, Allie was guarding a player on the other team who is slightly larger than I am. All you could see behind him were two little hands poking out from behind his shoulders. Fortunately, they did not throw him the ball when she was guarding him.
Oh, and a tip of the cap to the referees in the game, who understood that the kids are all learning the game and did things such as reminding them to dribble the ball. No fouls were called in our game. Word is that a foul was called earlier in the morning, and it made a little girl cry, so they stopped calling fouls. Based on the speed of the game, I think that was probably the right call.
She had fun the rest of the game, and even grabbed a rebound. But the most important thing is that she is learning to be part of a team. And isn’t that the most important thing? I mean, after you know you’ll get dinner.