MVRC Jazz: 0 - 1

Woo Hoo!!! Alright, I know that the team lost today, but we won the second half :). As you know, I am the head coach for the Mar Vista Recreation Center (Not Utah) Jazz. Yesterday, we had our first practice with five or more people in attendance. Then, today, we had our first game. As you can probably imagine, we didn't do very well. First half score: 12-37. The Kids came back to the bench deflated and dejected, looking to me for guidance and direction. I peered into their glazed-over eyes, glanced up at the scoreboard and winced a little, searching for a muse, some method of conjuring up any ounce of oratory inspiration and encouragement. As the kids panted before me, only one thing went through my mind. So, being the man that I am, I had to be honest with them: "Wow", I gasped... "That was pretty rough." What do you want from me? I'm new to this stuff.

Honestly, we were down by 25 points for two reason: Lack of practice time together, and lack of an experienced coach. So I looked to the 75% of a team we had available and I told them "It looks bad right now, I know. But we're going to do better in the second half." I told them all that this was not the time for us to shrink and hide, but to shine. When you're down by 25, you might as well experiment, right? All the pressure is gone. You know, they say that it's all about having fun, so I told them to just go out there and have fun. And can you believe that they actually bought it?

We instituted a "Don't-Look-At-The-Scoreboard" Rule in the second half, which just made people look at the scoreboard more, and the MVRC Jazz went out and played their hearts out in the second half. My substitution patterns were more succinct and meaningful and the defense was more inspired. The offense still sputtered and looked at times like we hadn't worked on any offense together as 5-man units (we still haven't, actually, but that's beside the point) but the play was inspiring. By games end, we had shaved 10 points off of the "Suns" lead and would have gotten it down further if not for a running clock.

All in all, I'd say it was a successful outing. No one got injured, everyone seemed to have fun, I finally got a really good look at how my players react to each other and in different situations. Also, I found out that I'm putting a couple of players in positions that they don't need to be in. We Still lost by double digits, but we did much better in the second half and once we finally get our full team together (Hopefully this Friday), the Jazz are going to be a force in the MVRC Majors division league.

Next week, win or lose, I'm taking all the kids out for pizza after the game (man I hope we win... I scouted next week's opponent in today's game and they have some really good players). You'll know more as I do.

Until then,