Red Five

This was 4th grade travel basketball tryouts (I know, no big deal in the grand scheme of things).  

At the tryout (2 hours long) they use “independent evaluators”, so no one is supposed to know the kids, which is good and bad.  Good in that (I hope) it takes away the politics of it.  Bad in that there are a lot of people who know these kids and can tell you by a whole body of work who are the best players.

There are 3 kids who got screwed, 2 getting put on the B team (my kid was 1 of them), and 1 getting royally screwed and put on the C team (and I actually feel the worst for him).

The hard part is that these 3 kids were on a house team together last year (no travel in 3rd grade) and won the league with only one game being less than a 10 point margin.  Then they played all summer together in 3 on 3 leagues.  And just 3 weeks ago they played a team made up of 2 A players and 1 C player and won by 30+ points.  And later that night they played another team made up of 3 A players and won by 10+.

We talked to him last night and gave him basically the whole “life isn’t always fair” and “use this as a learning experience” speeches.  I’m just hoping at school today there isn’t too much drama with the kids sniping at each other about it.

And taking the kid out of the equation, the worst part for me is having to deal with texts from other dads letting me know that “they’re sorry” and having to answer their questions of “what happened?” and “how’s the kid taking it?”.

A travel team?  Stay away from travel any kind of ball.