We’ve been to a lot of basketball games this season. Over the last couple of weeks, Yanni’s team has played freshmen teams from local high schools. There was a disappointing defeat at the Catholic High school. They had no bench! But they had a girl who could shoot 3 point shots all day. And they beat us by 4 points.

Then we played the Christian High School. Slaughtered us. I think we kept them from a double digit win, but, a loss nevertheless.

But the coaches insisted that the girls got better by playing these competitive teams. The two games they had won during the season were against homeschool teams. We’ve played three homeschool teams, so that would be a 2 out of 3 record against homeschool teams. Not bad, considering our tournament will be exclusively against homeschool teams.

Yesterday we had a rematch with one of those teams we’d beaten before. Before, we watched as they whittled our 10 point lead to 2 points, and we just barely won.

Yesterday, we traveled 45 minutes to play them, braving single digit temperatures, beating a huge snow storm.

When we got there, the gym was dark. The bleachers were still pushed up against the wall. Yanni was the first person to arrive. She was thrilled. I turned on a light in the gym, and then waited in the hall with the other children.

Yanni was a starter, probably because she’d gotten there so early. It took a long time for either team to score the first basket. The other team got the first basket. Then our team got a basket, and some kind of foul that allowed us to shoot again from the court. We had 4 points, but the scoreboard didn’t reflect that for a long time. I began to think that maybe our first shot hadn’t counted. Then, finally, the scoreboard gave us our due.

In the second half, our team really took off. This time we took advantage of the fact that their team had no bench. We had four on the bench, and rotated them wisely. We pulled to a 9 point lead.

And we kept our lead! And we built on it. We even had an exciting basket attempt at the final buzzer. That final basket didn’t go in, but we won the game, decidedly! The girls are now more confident to go against another freshman team, this time of an A school.

We hear they’re having a rough season.