Our accomplishments this weekend were great! Although we did not take the trophy home this tournament, we made it to the championship game again as a 3rd grade team in a 4th grade bracket. Most important...our boys gave it their best shot and never gave up! Our team definitely not only used this tournament to improve their fundamentals, but revealed their huge desire and heart to play hard against any team......exactly what our goal is. The team's work ethics were awesome!
FIRE..........Our kids use that very important word to emphasize the importance of working hard each second on defense. Because we are a young team, in comparison, our boys understand the importance of keeping pressure on their opponents every second of the game. Our team did exceptionally well doing just that against all three teams that we played this weekend. Our weekly improvement of being on fire has been noticeable in every player. Josh is one of our newest players on our team. Josh has shown huge improvement in knowing what to do on the defense and offense which provides him the ability to use his natural talent. His improvement to be on fire was very noticeable this weekend. Mathew and Evan did exceptionally well following the coaches instructions. Both Mathew and Evan really improved in stepping up to defend against a player driving into the middle....great job, boys! They used their fire to not allow the offensive player make that basket. Their fire gave them the strength to box out and get those rebounds that the coaches asked them to fight for. Awesome!
Our last two days in practice, the team worked on head fakes and jab steps. Bennett really did a great job with his head fakes in the # 5 ("big man") position. His head fakes and/or jabs made the defender leave his feet giving Bennett an opportunity to drive straight to the basket. Awesome! Another area of improvement was the trapping abilities that I saw in our boy's full court defense, especially in the first and second games. Wow........what a huge task for our boys to do so young and they did it well! Dante, Cole, and Nathan used their quick feet and intense defense to provide awesome pressure to help keep the full court pressure on the other teams. Great job boys! Andrew and Johnny were able to either deny the pass during the full court pressure or anticipate the pass to get the steal. With their quick feet, they were able to assist in making sure the pressure was intense on defense at all times.
The 3rd grade Dawgs gave a really strong and solid team effort this weekend. I am proud to be a part of the team and YBA family that we have. Great job boys!
Coach Martinez
YBA Youth Basketball Academy
Founded by Director, Ken Gee in 2004
This was Josh's second tournament with the Dawgs. He has only 5 practices with the team. I can already say that his level of comfort with the team and coaches is very high.
ReplyDeleteI have been Josh's coach for the last three years and as a dad it has been an incredible experience watching my son play on "FIRE". Josh has always been an offensive player and did not show much desire to play defense. It has been great watching him pick the ball up full court and crash the boards even though he's the smallest guy on the court.
Nicole and I would both like to personally thank the coaches, players, parents and the YBA club for immediately including us in the family. We have felt welcome from day 1 and for that alone, we are grateful.
The Mack Family