Grant's Big Game

Joseph is on the far left; Grant is on the far right

Grant and Joseph signed up for basketball in January and Joe was able to coach. Unfortunately, Joseph broke his arm after the first game, and was bummed to have to quit, but Grant stuck with it and had a great time even though his team was killed every game. Our team's average score was 6 points to the other teams' average of 40 or so. Talk about slaughter!

Grant's team consisted mostly of 4th graders with a couple of fifth graders, while every other team consisted mostly of 5th graders with a couple of fourth graders. That year of experience proved to make a HUGE difference. That, and the fact that the other teams had several players that were taller than me. Okay, so I'm not very tall to begin with, but Grant's team didn't have anybody that was taller than me.

As the weeks wore on, Grant improved greatly as a defender. He even blocked a couple of shots against guys over a foot taller than him. But the day of the last game arrived and he had not yet scored a basket, which was something he REALLY wanted to do. The first three quarters came and went, the fourth quarter began, and his chances of getting to score got smaller and smaller.

The other team had been playing zone defense a lot which is illegal in this league. They were only supposed to use man-to-man defense, but the refs refused to call the double (and sometimes triple) teaming that was going on. (This happened every game and every week Joe got more vocal with the refs until he almost got thrown out of one game.) Usually the double teaming resulted in our guy with the ball getting stuck, the ball being grabbed out of his hands by one of the many boys on the other team that surrounded him, the other team running down the court, laying it in and scoring. But during the fourth quarter of the last game, the guy guarding Grant left him near the basket in order to double team our guy with the ball. The guy with the ball saw the double team coming, saw Grant open, thought quickly, and passed it to Grant. Grant had a clear shot, he took it, the ball bounced on the rim and FELL IN!!!!

Grant's reaction was priceless. Words can not describe the shock, excitement, thrill, joy and many other emotions that were on his face after that play. He skipped down the court while punching the air and he grinned literally from ear to ear. Happy tears came to my eyes as I watched him and I couldn't stop them. Grant, I love you. Not because you scored a basket, but because you always fight hard in everything you do and never give up (and lots of other reasons too)!