First games today

[Back In The Saddle]

Well, it's finally time. I have my first games (Frosh, JV double-header) today. Travel game, about 90 minutes from here. It's great to get going!

[Ref in PA]

First off, Good Luck! My season begins a week from Friday - I can't wait. I have three scrimages in between now and then.

I feel sorry for you guys in the west. The longest I have to travel is about 30 minutes - until playoffs, then we get to travel more. Of course, we do not get milage pay, we have to keep track of that for the IRS.

[M&M Guy]

Originally Posted by Back In The Saddle

Well, it's finally time. I have my first games (Frosh, JV double-header) today. Travel game, about 90 minutes from here. It's great to get going!

Good luck!

(Btw, did anyone mention you look a lot like Juulie?...)

[Junker]

High school girls starts here tonight as well. I'm about 30 minutes away and have the #3 4A girl's team in the state on the road at a solid in-conference rival. Great way to start a year. Have a great one to everyone else!

[Back In The Saddle]

Originally Posted by M&M Guy

Good luck!

(Btw, did anyone mention you look a lot like Juulie?...)

More's the pity for her!

[TimTaylor]

Hope they go well BITS!

We don't start quite yet - my first games are GV next Tues. & Wed. Was going to do a scrimmage this Sat. but it just got cancelled.....

[bigbeardedbryan]

Had my first scrimmage today after three years off, two new knees, and a move to PA. It went awfully--I feel like I spent way too much time trying to figure out where on the court I belonged, and I am beginning to think I made a mistake getting back into the game.

Hope yours all go LOTS better than this one did.

[grunewar]

Originally Posted by Back In The Saddle

Well, it's finally time. I have my first games (Frosh, JV double-header) today. Travel game, about 90 minutes from here. It's great to get going!

90 Minutes? Wow that's far! Or is it?

In N Virginia we have a large association and many schools very close-in. I rarely have to go further than 35 miles round trip (of course with our traffic it may take a while).

What's normal for others out there?

PS - Had my first JV/V scrimmages last night and man was I rusty and tight to start off. Sr. partner kept telling me to relaxe. Got going after a while though.....sore today.

[Adam]

Originally Posted by grunewar

90 Minutes? Wow that's far! Or is it?

(snip)
What's normal for others out there?

There are 4 high schools within 15 minutes of my home. After that, the nearest HS is 30 miles one way and it goes up from there. Typical travel time is about an hour for out of town games, we have at least three schools we serve that are 90 minutes or more away.

[Mark Padgett]

The games I work for our kids rec league are all close. In fact, I usually work at one of the three schools that are within five minutes of my house. If it was summer, I might walk.

Nah.

[grunewar]

Same with me and my Rec Leagues. I have 10 schools w/in 10 miles - it's great! Doesn't eat up what little $ I make on gas!!

[Back In The Saddle]

Originally Posted by bigbeardedbryan

Had my first scrimmage today after three years off, two new knees, and a move to PA. It went awfully--I feel like I spent way too much time trying to figure out where on the court I belonged, and I am beginning to think I made a mistake getting back into the game.

Hope yours all go LOTS better than this one did.

Sorry to hear that yours went so hard. Three years is a while. But it's not an eternity. There are plenty of us here who have taken decades off and gotten back in. I picked my nickname (BITS) back when I was just getting going again after about 15 years of not having done basketball.

So you may not be able to walk right back into it and pick up where you left off. But with your previous experience, it won't take that long to get back in the swing of it.

Do yourself a favor, make a vow to give it a season. Then decide if you made a mistake after that. I'm pretty sure, at that point, that you'll agree it wasn't a mistake.

Let us know how it goes.

[Back In The Saddle]

I'm happy to report things went well. Or, rather, we made them go well, which was an even better test for the first game out this season.

It was a perrenial 1A contender v. a 1A team that I'm guessing had more than a few kids who had never played basketball before. So the biggest challenge was just game management. By the end of the second game I was scraping the bottom of my bag of tricks. But we kept it under control right to the end.

There was a little rust to work off, though. We got surprised by the bonus once during the second game (and had to huddle to identify our shooter). We couldn't find the game ball after halftime of the first half (not really our fault, but still...). But we quickly noticed when the clock turned off, and knew roughly what the remaining time was. All in all, many many more things we really right than went wrong.

I was a little concerned about working a DH right off the bat, whether I had my game legs yet. But by the end I was ready to go a third if we needed to. And we thought we might need to -- the V guys arrived later than expected.

It was a good night.

Good luck to everybody else with their first games!

[Scrapper1]

Originally Posted by bigbeardedbryan

Had my first scrimmage today after three years off, two new knees, and a move to PA. It went awfully

I just wanted to reinforce what BITS said. I'm rusty if I take 3 months off. I can't imagine 3 years off. Stick with it, work on one thing at a time. It should come back to you.

[Corndog89]

Originally Posted by Scrapper1

I just wanted to reinforce what BITS said. I'm rusty if I take 3 months off. I can't imagine 3 years off. Stick with it, work on one thing at a time. It should come back to you.

Amen! I worked a couple scrimmages this past Saturday and it was the first time I'd blown a whistle in anger since April. The first 10-15 minutes everything felt so out of place, so wrong. But as the day wore on the rhythm started coming back. I have another scrimmage today...by the time the season starts next week I think (hope??) I'll be comfortable again.