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| Mark loves playing with all of his friends. |
Mark played competitive basketball in the Bantam League for the first time. He really wanted to do this because he could put together his own team. He took all his friends from school, and even though they weren't all top-notch players, they were good kids who worked hard.
We paid for a little nicer uniforms, and we had to buy our own practice time for Dad to coach the boys each Friday night. Luckily, we shared the gym with a friend's team, so we split up for the first half and practiced, and then we scrimmaged during the second half. Our practices were fun, but it was the games we really enjoyed.
There were 31 teams in our league. Mark's team was actually really competitive, thanks in large part to Mark, who led the team in scoring, rebounds, and assists. We had a few close games. We lost one in sudden-death overtime. Another time, with the score tied, Mark dribbled down to three seconds and then launched a game winning three. At the end of the season, we finished in fifth place at 7-2, which was good enough to qualify for the eight team tournament. Unfortunately, all four teams above us had perfect records, and the number one seed, who we'd meet in the second round had hammered us in the regular season.
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| Mark was the point guard of the team. |
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| Mark was really good at help defense, too. |
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| Mark led in scoring every game. |
We showed up the night of the tournament and had a terrible first half. We couldn't get a shot to fall, and their guys would give us a jab step and then go right by us. They had 8 layups in a row, and we were down 29-7 at halftime. Our boys were nearly in tears. We made a few adjustments at halftime and used a zone and a full court trap. Though we got down by 26, we started to make a run. With 12 minutes left, we'd cut it to 18. With six minutes left, it was down to ten. The boys were so excited as they scored and scored and the other team kept using timeouts. Even the girls running the scoreboard were excited when we cut the lead all the way down to two points with around 30 seconds left. After the other team made two foul shots, we came down and started shooting three pointers. We missed four before the time expired. The final score was 44-40, and we'd finished the game on a 33-11 run. Everyone was smiling and happy and congratulating each other, despite the fact that we'd lost. We'd done something better. We'd proved that we could play with the best.
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| The other boys looked to Mark to lead the team. |
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| Mark hit some big foul shots in the final game. |
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| Mark loved blocking kids. |
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| We are proud of Mark and Mom wishes she'd taken more pictures, but she was the official score keeper. |
