Basketball skills in middle school

My son, Kendall, played his first basketball tournament last Saturday. It was thrilling, crushing, exciting and exhausting. And he’s only in 6th grade. And I’m talking about me. It’s my first year of school events where they actually keep score. And it was a tiny sweat-filled drama that stretched out the length of a Saturday.

Foul!

I was a fine, calm, courteous spectator at the start of each game. However, when we got down by 2 points and someone on the other team double dribbled, I was gripping the seat of the metal folding chair, wedged into the small gym at West Middle School, and shouting out the call. In my head, very loudly, without saying a word, leaning forward, looking at Tim, “Did you see that?”


Only when the ref called it, did I lean back in relief. God forbid a 12-year-old boy get away with a double dribble in a 24-minute basketball game, playing for nothing, in a borrowed jersey.

However, I was just as sure to call our team’s double dribbles. I was a fair critic, coach and ref, for all. I was able to sink the ball a dozen or more times in a single game in a dozen different scenarios, all with the will of my mind and my grip on a metal chair. Again and again, I saw what should be done, envisioned it, willed it, telepathy-ed it, played it, but in the end, usually cursed it.

At no point did anyone ask me actually to touch a ball. Which was good. I would have been outed as a dumb-luck player, one with nothing more than my own sixth-grade experience, molded nearly three decades ago, a basketball career that ended almost before it began due to considerable ineptitude and lack of trying.

Free throws

Not the free throw. Anything but the free throw. It’s a gimmie that almost never takes at this age. What’s worse than an entire gym hanging on your every move as you toe the line, launch the ball, bounce it slightly to the left of the basket and back into the hands of your opponent? When your team is down by the same number of free throws you’re allotted, that’s what.

These boys turned into men before our very eyes. One angst-ridden free throw at a time, forced into the limelight, their inadequacies and their successes on display for parents and grandparents alike to see.

But I marveled at how they took their misses and their points in stride, every inch a man on the court. And each time I held my breath, reliving my Interlochen Lakers days in a similar gym of similar outcome.

The Glory

In our first game, one of our players made an unbelievable full-court shot in the final seconds of the first quarter.

Full-court, swish, nothing but net. The crowd was on its feet, our team, their team, the refs, the lady selling tickets two hallways down, everyone, and I mean everyone, was shouting. I cheered, part 12-year-old girl again, part proud imaginary coach.

In our second game, we faced battle in a sudden-death shoot-out. There I sat on my metal chair, hoping the dudes wouldn’t blow it when, out of nowhere, one of our littlest guys sank it, swish, nothing but net, once more.

I was shouting again, my wildest (sixth-grade) dreams coming true. I’d never been on a winning team before (technically still not; benched forever in my metal chair) and the victory was sweet.

In the end, we took second in the basketball tournament. While the loss of the championship was a (hefty) blow, we figured second place was a decent (amazing, butt-kicking) showing.

I’d survived the sweat and the tears and the drama. (Oh, and the boys did too.)

Diet Makeover - Green Fruit Smoothies

Green Fruit Smoothies. They’re all the rage and there’s a reason why: They’re fantastic. Why have we waited so long to start drinking them and using high-powered blenders to do so?

We are now consuming 2 cups of spinach, a handful of kale, 2 cups of peaches, 1 cup of pineapple and two bananas a day.

It’s a bona fide diet makeover. Our bodies are happy. We are happy. The guilt is gone. They are delicious. And, bonus, there are great side effects:

The checkout line

Do you know how good it feels to check out with four pineapples at once? You can’t help humming to yourself, waiting for the world to notice the amount of goodness on sale 2/$4 this week. Especially if you’ve spent the last five years at one store in particular buying bag after bag of chocolate. The checkout ladies try to hide their surprise; you’re dying for them to comment on it.

The guy ahead of you

You explode with pride when the guy ahead of you checks out with just a brown, waxy pastry bag. When the cashier asks, “How many?” he replies, “Two fat pills.” You giggle. Of course you can. Your own bag of fat pills is being smashed by four rolling gargantuan tropical fruits with thorny points sloughing off on the conveyor belt.

Note: Drinking smoothies has not stopped us from eating sugar, frosting, cookies or donuts. It has, however, alleviated our guilt of doing so.

The freezer section

Have you seen the “Farm to Freezer” fruit at Tom’s Food Markets? Fresh sliced peaches from Smeltzer Orchard Company in Benzonia, flash frozen in time just for us! Buying peaches feels great. But buying local peaches with a label dated by a human hand with a Sharpie marker? You feel like you grew them yourself.

The greens

You find yourself marking out a few goals. Can you eat two bins of this organic stuff before it turns into wet, lacy slop? Can you fill your blender until you regret it? Can you stomach a handful of kale drowned in fruit? How about two handfuls? (Answer: no) It’s a glorious feeling to eat triple-washed spinach by 8 a.m. seven days a week.

The prep

Line up four of those fancy SpongeBob things on your counter and you’ll finally use that Ginsu knife you got last Christmas. You feel like Barefoot Contessa.

You are slicing and dicing when you hear one of the children exclaim, “You got four of them?” You almost shout in response but, when you turn, you see they are looking at something else, the 4 bags of chocolate chips you also bought. You go back to your work because it feels good and right, and those chips feel very, very wrong.

Enjoy the slice of the knife as it sections the yellow fruit. The pineapple juice will flow off the cutting board and onto the counter and, eventually, down the front of it. Curse it, even as you rejoice in its existence. For you have cleaned many, many drips of ice cream and this, this is long awaited.

The straw

Every straw you’ve used in adulthood has been one of three:

1. A Burger King straw. You’ve just consumed a Whopper. A Double Whopper. Regret is heavy and so are you.

2. A milkshake straw. Good God, you’ve just had the world’s best chocolate shake at Don’s Drive-In. There is no regret. Life is short. We give an all-out pass to ice cream. Always.

3. A mixed drink straw. The perfect conduit and stirrer of vodka over ice. It is tiny and thin, trying to stop you. But you persist, never a quitter. This straw holds a place of honor as it is always the first step to very fun bad decisions.

Finally, we have No. 4: The smoothie straw, the world’s first guilt-free straw. They come in neon yellow, bright pink and life-affirming spinach green. With these straws, you are responsible and pure. No wasted calories or surprise hangovers. And when a wedge of kale gets stuck in them, it’s satisfying. The nutrition is so huge that it can’t fit.

So there it is, the biggest diet makeover ever to happen to the chocolate-chip-loving twins. It’s a great start to the New Year and we wish you a smoooooth 2015!

Cliff jumping

We went to Lake Placid, N.Y., for our family vacation this summer. On the first day, we stopped into High Peaks Cyclery for the sidewalk sale but left with a plan to jump off a 20-foot cliff.

“You’ll wanna hike from Copperas Pond trailhead,” the guy at the shop said. He was a lean, mean cycling machine. “Take your swimsuits. You can jump off cliffs into the lake.”

The children stood wide-eyed with hope. “Absolutely!” I said, trying to be cool just long enough to leave the shop with some dignity.

I took a map from the man. Good news—there were 10-, 20- and 30-foot death options. We weren’t out of the shop before the kids started howling with excitement.

“No way,” I said. I slammed the truck door and turned to face three very angry would-be cliff jumpers.

“We’re doing it,” Tim said. The kids played it cool, knowing that if there was anyone who wanted to go more than they, it was their dad.

An hour later we sat at the trailhead. The man had failed to mention that the short half-mile hike was also vertical. We pushed on until the trail curved around a lake. Clear, still like glass, trees and cliffs on every shore.

Which is when we heard the laughter. Six guys, all 30-somethings, partying down in the distance around a campfire. Three of them wandered over.

“Are you jumping?” This was their opening.

I took control of the situation swiftly. “Are you?”

We stood on the 20-foot death option looking down as a group. Our family of four and these three dudes.

“We’ve never done it,” they finally admitted.

“Someone should go see how deep it is,” I said.

Kendall and Nelson scrambled down the rocks and into the lake. We could see that the rocks we stood on jutted down into the water as far as they jutted up. The boys dove under as far as they could before bobbing up and reporting, “It’s deep!”

The biggest dude hesitated. “I don’t know,” he said. “I’m a little heavier than a 9 year old.”

That gave me my out.

“Listen up, boys,” I said to my two. “You can jump, if these guys jump first.”

The dudes looked at me. We exchanged a glance of mutual terror. Then, they regrouped. Game on.

Two of the dudes turned on the one with a beer in his hand. “Do it, man! Come on, do it!”

Beer Man crept to the ragged edge and looked down. Take-off would have to be clear and purposeful, and ideally, sober.

“I’ll need a running start,” he said.

Kendall and Nelson joined in with the chanting. At this moment, a horrifying clarity came over me. It was my father’s booming voice: “If your friends jumped off a building, would you?”

About then, Beer Man ran and jumped off the cliff. He flopped sideways in the air like an alewife fish. He hit the water horizontally, a full-length body slap on the water.

We all waited, held our breath and watched. Yes, Beer Man surfaced! Alive! With both legs working! And a stinging red mark down his left arm, leg and face! Unequivocal success!

Even as I celebrated with the group, another horrifying moment of clarity came. This time it was my booming voice: “You can jump, if these guys jump first.”
What had I done? The boys were already stripping down to their suits and toeing the edge.

Kendall jumped first. Then Nelson. Then Tim. All three of the most precious things in the world to me jumped off into thin air and splashed into a lovely, gorgeous, perfect mountain lake 20 feet below. All three surfaced ecstatic and alive.

Beer Man came over and toasted me with approval. “What a cool family.”

And this very cool mom sat there in absolute terror for the next hour as her boys found more and more cliffs to jump off of. But in the end, I was laughing too. Even as I begged them all not to do it.