Yesterday was the Michigan Home School state basketball tournament. It was held in one of those places with 8 adjacent basketball courts. Nets separated the courts, which were surrounded by a walking track. The genius that booked 70 basketball teams also thought it was a good idea to keep the walking track open to the regular clientele. So, yes, while we were standing outside the court, trying not to get hit with a ball, we got to contend with angry walking women, saying, “this is a walking track right here!”

There was basketball as far as the eye could see. I took all the children, and Xay quickly slipped away to play impromptu ball with his friends, the little brothers of the girls’ Varsity and JV teams. He has met more people through basketball!

Our first match was at 10:45 AM against a team we’d recently beaten by 30 points. The game was neck and neck for the first 3 quarters. At one point, a girl on Yanni’s team turned a flip over the ball in an attempt to spike a quick basket before the half-time buzzer. The ball went straight up in the air. I know I mixed my sports there; you’d have to see it to believe it. This girl obviously plays soccer and volleyball as well as basketball, and it shows when the pressure’s on, and she’s diving to the floor to keep the ball alive. Spiking and diving work surprisingly well in basketball. Sometimes I say it’s like she’s in the matrix, the way she maneuvers around other players.

By the fourth quarter, our team had finally gotten the hang of the open court situation (as opposed to a court with walls behind each basket), and they eked out a 14 point victory. We moved on in the semi-finals. Our next game? 5:45. PM. And we were stuck in Mt. Pleasant, 2 1/2 hours away from home.

So, yeah, to pass the time, we watched. . . basketball. Our girls’ JV team had played the night before and just lost their first game, so we watched their final game on Saturday. They won 44-3, with the whole team scoring.

Then we watched the boys’ JV game. I recognized three boys on that team. One was from Xay’s 4th grade basketball experience. That was the year we put Xay on a 5th-6th grade team. They lost every single game that year, and Xay didn’t play basketball again for three years. Another boy on the team was in Xay’s basketball club last year, and the third boy was Yanni’s coach’s son.

It’s always a shock for me to watch a boys’ game after watching girls’ games. The boys are so much rougher! All of them slide along on the floor, knock each other down, jump for the rebounds. When something like that happens in a girls’ game, there’s silent gasping until the player gets up. The boys practically bounce off the floor and are cheerfully ready to play again. The boys won their game or something. I kinda stopped watching to see what the babies were up to. They had plenty of little people to play with; all the large families were out in force!

For Yanni’s second game, we were on the lookout for our team to struggle as they had in the first game. They just seemed a little off. The other team had a huge crowd cheering for them, and it was affecting our girls. We had to win the cheerfest! We started the cycle of singing alternately let’s go and Defense! I got the babies into it, and pretty soon our stands were full of Varsity boys, parents and little kids, all cheering their hearts out. We couldn’t hear the other team’s cheering squad anymore. Our team pulled to an 8 point lead, and we kept the lead for the rest of the game. Final score: 60-49! And the crowd goes wild!!!!!

And basketball is over for the year!!!! Well, not exactly. We still have another game next week. It’s the final final. The trophy match against the former first place in the state team, from Traverse City. And what would the first place team in the state be? That would be our team. Not that I’m proud or anything. It promises to be an exciting game.