sports day

It was a Saturday morning like many others. Woke up, wrote a column, had breakfast.

But Jack had an away basketball game, so I headed out to Taco Bell to get him a quick lunch before he left. And Kate had a home basketball game, so I made her a quesadilla before we left. And then they both had indoor tryouts for the upcoming baseball season in the afternoon, so it would be a two-sport day for them.

Kate isn't fully getting basketball just yet. She likes to try to shoot the ball in practice and in our driveway, so that's good. But she might not fully grasp the game concept. Like that she needs to fight for the ball, and try to get between the other team's player and the ball, and try to stop the other player from shooting. The games go fairly quickly -- this one took maybe 45 minutes -- which is good, since a lot of it is spent quietly or encouragingly trying to get Kate to go for the ball, or get open, or have more of a sense of what to do. It's her first year playing and we're cutting her plenty of slack as long as she's merely hustling and running and trying. But the highlights are a fairly low bar. In this game she went for a rebound that bounced near her, caught a pass from a player standing near her, and then passed it to another player a few seconds later without incident. So, good! She's working on it. I try to impress upon her the need to be more aggressive, and hope it takes eventually.

Jack's team won its first game. There have been about eight or nine, with one close loss and a whole lot of blowouts. I missed it, but enjoyed it vicariously through texts from Emily. He made his first basket! Had a steal, an assist, and a rebound. Later he said to me, "I had a quadruple single!" Funny. Pictures afterward showed a smiling, happy team, which is always good to see (and unprecedented in the basketball arena).

I took Kate to her baseball tryouts. It's possible she's reaching a little high in trying out for Minors, but the alternative is a year in Rookie where she'd be one of the oldest players (and kids as much as two years younger than her, some nearly three). Plenty of her friends will be in Minors, and I'd likely be one of her coaches, so that would be good. We practiced some the past few weeks in the yard (as weather permitted) and the basement. She didn't always do great, but she tried, and that's what I told her about tryouts: Hustle. Try hard. Do your best.

And she did. I saw her hit pretty well (one of the observing coaches said to me, She stands like Jack!), field a few ground balls, run hard. She struggled with popups, and I knew she would, but she tried. And most of the kids struggled with those, in part because they just don't see many of them in games (and it's even harder doing it an indoor facility). But she didn't look lost out there, and maybe she makes it. Afterward she was tired and not sure how she did, but I told her I was proud of her.

Then came Jack's tryouts. Jack back in his baseball uniform with all of his friends struck me as taller somehow than I remembered. He looked older, more confident, happy. I was just a little taken aback. He hit well. Fielded most of the ground balls hit to him cleanly. Dropped a popup, which was unlike him, and I could tell he was bummed about it. Said he got a late start on the running. Overall he did fine and I wasn't sure why he was bummed afterward. Turned out he wanted to have the best tryout, as he thought it would get him onto the team he most wanted to be on. I explained that it wouldn't necessarily work that way, and we talked it out in the car on the way home. And he said, "Oh." Brightened. "Then, never mind." He's like that, can put stuff behind him quickly.

I told them both I was proud of them, we ordered a pizza which was fantastic, and everyone went to bed. It had been a day.