4th Grade-January 29-30

Our weekend of playing up in another 5th grade tournament as a 4th grade team proved to be another success for our 4th grade Dawgs....


On Saturday, our Dawgs played a strong 5th/6th grade Hurricanes team for our first game. The Hurricanes were comprised of mostly 6th graders and a few younger players, but our 4th grade Dawgs proved that they could play with even the 6th graders. Our Dawgs started this game using a new offense that we recently began practicing. Our Dawgs did a great job remembering how to run the offense with successful drives into the middle of the key. It was not an easy task to out rebound the much taller 6th grade Hurricanes, but our Dawgs gave it their best effort. On defense, our Dawgs kept their fire and utilized their speed to prevent the Hurricanes from out scoring our Dawgs by very much. We did not win this game, however, when our 4th grade Dawgs lose by only 9 points to a mostly 6th grade team, it is a win in my book. Great job boys!

Our second game on Saturday, we played the 5th grade Folsom Force team on a very small court in Roseville Sports Complex. Folsom Force had played earlier that morning against the same Hurricanes team that we had lost to in the same day. Folsom Force made the Hurricanes look like a 2nd grade team. I knew that we were going to have our hands full with Folsom Force on a small court. Our Dawgs started out with a strong showing by keeping on top of Folsom by just a few points. Unfortunately, in the second half Folsom began a strong press against our much smaller Dawgs that turned the game around. Our Dawgs gave it their best effort, but came up with a higher percentage of errors causing our 2nd loss for this tournament..........but we did do well for a 4th grade team, with lots of room for improvement.

Sunday, we started out bright and early at HWP for an 8 am game. To my surprise, our Dawgs looked like they were all wide awake during our warm-ups, so it provided me some hope for a strong effort against a much taller 5th grade Reno Ballers team. During this game, our Dawgs started out with a strong man to man defense that proved to be much stronger than what the Ballers could handle from our much faster Dawgs team. Each player on our Dawgs team became a rolling ball of fire while on the court playing defense. There was a show of awesome team work by every Dawg every minute of the game. I don't think our team parents would want to do this, but I told the Dawgs players, "you boys are going to play every game at 8 am now!" and, although I was only playing, the Dawgs reacted with a big, "yes!". I was happy to hear that they are going to play early in the morning just as well as later in the day. On offense, I couldn't have been happier seeing the boys run their offense as well as they did. They forced the Ballers to move for one side of the court to the other creating drives up the middle and around the baseline. Our boys out rebounded the much taller Ballers because of the determination our Dawgs had to fight for the ball. Awesome! Our Dawgs Defeated the Ballers by approximately 40 plus points.

Our second game on Sunday, our Dawgs had to quickly leave court 5 after defeating the Ballers and run to court 7 for a 9 am game. Our boys had not even had a minute to rest before playing a strong, fast, and very tall 5th grade YBA Xtreme team coached by Coach Garcia, a great coach. Our Dawgs started out strong and held the Xtreme team to very few points, but began losing a little strength toward the end of the game. Needless to say, our 4th graders had the confidence, but couldn't push out the strength and stamina to win back to back against a well coached older team. Our Dawgs were defeated, but gave 110% against their YBA brothers until the last second of the game. This was a great challenge and learning experience for our Dawgs. Thanks for your hard work boys!! Thank you parents for your dedication to our team and arriving early to this game!!



Coach Robert Martinez