Family News: Tourney Time for the Jazz!!

Maddi played in her first tournament today. Her first game was at 9 am which is pretty early on a Saturday morning. She had her friend and teammate Elizabeth stay the night last night and they were very good about going right to sleep. They were up bright and early at 6:30 without having to be woken up. They won their first game of the day against a 3rd grade team 10-2. At 1 in the afternoon they played their second game of the day against the Dynamite. The Dynamite beat us 46-6 just a couple of weeks ago but only beat us 35-6 today. We had improved in many areas over the last couple of weeks but we are a work in progress and it will take some time to get to the level of the Dynamite.
Maddi has several classmates and friends on the Dynamite so it is very important to her every time we play them. Unfortunately they have an awesome coach who has collegiate level coaching experience. He is a friend of ours, an ex-neighbor and we have coached softball with him since Maddi was in t-ball. Maddi was asked to tryout for the Dynamite but she chose not too which is good because they are very serious and play 5 games every weekend. But, they are a well oiled machine and play lights out the entire game.
During my vacation the coach called and asked if Maddi would like to join them for practice one evening. I encouraged her to do it and she agreed, but apparently she thought her team was going to be there as well and didn't realize that she was the only one from her team there until we pulled into the parking lot. She was a little freaked out and one of her classmates (who has made mean comments to her about how badly they have beat her team) walked into the gym and were very nasty to her. If I were her I would have told my Dad forget it and walked out...but she didn't. She stayed and practiced right along side of them the whole two hours. The practice was awesome, organized and challenging. Maddi was treated as a member of the team by the coaches and eventually by the players. I think it had a real impact on her classmates to see that she is just as good as many of them, she's just not as polished or on a team of their caliber. I was so proud of her that she did something outside of her comfort zone and allowed herself to be challenged and she improved because of that. We were told she could practice with them any time and we hope to get her to commit to that. Unfortunately that would mean basketball practice 4 nights a week and then games on Saturday and/or Sunday...way too much!!
So after getting pulverized by the Dynamite the Jazz played the team that beat this morning in the semi-finals. Unfortunately 3 games proved too many and they struggled to a 7-4 loss, finishing 3rd out of 3 teams in their age group. All is well however because if they had won they would then have to face the Dynamite again in the final game and I think that loosing to them again would really have shaken their confidence.
I was encouraged to hear that she had fun today because that is all that really matters. Up next is a tournament in Wamego next week where after a couple of practices this week we hope the girls can do even better and continue to get better each game.