Basketball Closing Ceremonies

Basketball is finally over, and none too soon if you ask The Coach.  His pride is bruised considerably, so much  that he asked me not to even blog about it.  Explaining to him that blogging was about the good and the bad, and writing about the bad times is equally important as the good fell on deaf ears.  I thought I was on a roll with a good pep talk, but The Coach was not impressed.  He has given up on the silent treatment he used tonight for a few hours to sway me into not writing about it, but he is still sulking.  Before we left for the closing ceremonies, we had this conversation:

Me:   I know this season was rough, but even though you lost it was still a good season.  

Coach (mouth open, my-wife-is-crazy look on his face):   Pssshhhhh, how do you figure? 

Me:   It's important for Justice to learn how to lose, too.

Coach (eyes rolled):  Whatever.   Losing sucks.

And that's pretty much the end of that conversation.  I think the term "You can't teach an old dog new tricks" applies and lets just move on now, shall we?

Justice, on the other hand, learned so many valuable lessons this season.  He got a huge dose of much needed humility, and he finally learned how to be a good sport.  It wasn't necessarily that he was a bad sport, but he has never lost to this magnitude before, so he hasn't ever had the opportunity to learn true sportsmanship.    That's really all I wanted from the season, and I got that and then some.  I knew going in that it would be difficult, that being a 4th grader on the middle school team was going to be tough and it certainly was.  

During the halftime devotional of the last game of the season, Justice had the opportunity to speak to the crowd about how he felt about his playing experience this season.  He said how thankful he was that he was able to have his Dad for his coach, and that even though they didn't win, he loved his Dad so much.   He also said that he wanted to play hard and win for his Dad, because his Dad was trying so hard to teach them about the game.   And he cried.  And I cried. And a collective "awwwwwwww" came from the crowd.  And I had one of those fleeting "maybe we are doing something right" moments.   I take those wherever I can get them. The other boy that spoke also said that The Coach taught him everything he knows about basketball and that he was grateful for him.  And I consider that a win of a different proportion.

Here is a not-so-good-quality picture of Justice bearing his testimony to the crowd.  It amazes me that he is so willing to freely share his testimony at any time and any place.  I was terrified of public speaking when I was his age.  

Closing ceremonies were great. The pastor of the sponsoring church opened with a prayer, and gave a great talk on how he hoped those people who didn't belong to a church would find Jesus and encouraged them all to make that change in their lives.  Then, he introduced a painter, and he painted the coolest thing ever.   I will let the pictures speak for themselves:

AMEN!!!  And how cool is that?

The pastor said something that I wrote down on a Walmart receipt in my purse because I wanted to put it in this post.  He said "If you take all your past sins and put them in a big old pile like garbage and ask Jesus to come into your heart, those sins are covered by his blood and forgiven".  Then he led the crowd in a traditional sinners prayer, which isn't something that we do in our church, but it was sweet to hear people say this prayer that had obviously never done so before.

Every kid got a really nice new basketball for participating, which I thought was a far better choice than the typical trophy or medal.  Have you ever heard 200 basketballs bouncing at the same time?  Chaos!

Team picture

Picture of Justice and Joe after we got home last night

The door is closed on another season of basketball, and it's time to start thinking about soccer and the swim team.  Justice is almost at the age where sports is either going to take a leading role in his life or he will leave it behind.  Dad will no longer be The Coach and sports will get harder and more serious.  Part of me hopes he abandons some of the madness involved in being an athlete, but the other part of me knows how good sports has been for him.  Good life lessons are learned in team sports, and this season was certainly no exception.