February 2003: The season is over for us. We made the playoffs but lost in an overtime game to Coach Prices team. We had a fair season with a lot of short players. Our tallest player was only able to attend two games all season because of problems at home. The next to the last season game our second tallest player got hurt and was not able to play the rest of the season. This meant we went into the playoffs with six players instead of eight and five of the six are very short for basketball. Not to make excuses as Coach Price has a very good team, but two of our six players were fighting the flu and had to keep coming out to rest also. Our game plan was good and we were following it well also. We just ran out of steam. I have to say we did all we could to win in regulation but had to settle for the tie. Then in overtime we fought very hard but in the end watched a three pointer break the tie with four seconds left! It was one of my best friends who threw up the three pointer and I will probably never hear the end of it. It was a good shot. We got the ball into play and one of our stronger players threw up a Prayer from near half court, but it missed and we lost by the three. We then went to Pizza Hut and gave out little awards and Coach, Dad, told us how proud he was of each one of us. He told us that among the active coaches all of them thought with our tall kids gone and two kids under the weather than we were expected to loose BIG TIME like double figures! So he said we all listened to coaching well and executed better than anyone outside our team thought we could. Dad said he knows we did our best and this game our best was second best, but because we did our best we should all be very proud!

October 2002: Here we are again, try outs for basketball are this Saturday and dad is head coach of my team again. Next week we will know who our team members are for this year and get ready to start practice. The season will start near Thanksgiving again this year.
I am going to try to write something to update this page for each and every game this year like I used to do for soccer. I do not know where I will find the time, but I am going to try. So bookmark this page and look for all kinds of neat things coming up here.

May, 2002: Today was a very strange day at baseball, coach Howard of HYL Basketball came up to my dad and myself and ask us if we would like to be part of a Hernando County basketball team that will play all summer up in Citrus County? Seems they play up there and we can get in on it if we want to.
Dad has said we can do it if I want to, but to remember we are going to Texas in late June and staying through at least July 4th.
June, 2002: We have put together a team of ten kids to play in Citrus County and I wonder why I was picked? Each of the other kids have been playing basketball a long time and are real good. Dad says I should hang in there because I am very good for the amount of time I have been playing and will learn a lot in this league.
August, 2002: We ended our season with 5 wins and 5 losses and in fourth place in our division. The rules in Citrus County are more like college ball where here in Hernando they protect us a lot more with the rules in play here. Once we learned how to play the more aggressive style of this group, we did fine. We even beat the team that plays for a Citrus County Middle School that was expected to go undefeated for the season. I learned a lot and had a lot of fun, I hope I get to play in this league again next summer.

October, 2001: I ave been secelected by coach Tommy to play on his team in HYL Basketball. We have only seven players so it looks like we will get a lot of playing time.
My dad has been ask by coach Tommy to be his assistant coach and he has agreed, I also was named as a starter which as a first year player makes me real proud. I have already learned a lot of new things and look forward to the season starting.
We won our first game!
I had to be in Fort Lauderdale at a Martial Arts Hall of Fame banquet the Saturday of our second game, it seems three other players just did not show up to the game, so we had to forgfiet our second game. We are now one and one, the real bad news is coach Tommy has told us he can not continue to coach us as he has been told by his doctor he can only coach one team and his son plays on the other team he coaches. My dad is going to take over as head coach. Dad is a good coach, but the kids sure don't want to change coaches so it is going to be strange.
Well we have won our first game under my dad as coach. We only won by three points and it was close all of the way. Everyone got to play and I think we came together as a team.
I am sorry school work has kept me from keeping this page up as I should have, it is now near the end of the season, we are in second place because of forfiets, the Blue team has one more win than we do and the two times we were to play them we have forfieted! We play them this week and even if we win it looks like we will end up in second place.
Can you believe this, the number one team against the number two team and two of our players had to miss becuase of another function and one more had to miss because of a family thing. We just had to play nine good basketball players with only four of our team here! We were winning at the half, but almost too tired to even get off the bench for the third quarter. They only beat us by eight points in the end and they knew they had been in a game, but we did loos again. With only one game to go, we play the third place team that is only one game behind us so if we do not win we will not get a first round by for the tournament.
We win! Second place is now ours for the season and we go into the tournament not having to play the extra game the third place and below have to.
Today is the day, if we win we play next week for the championship and if we loose this is our last game.
We will end the season first or second! We have beat the Green team by one point! They played very well, but we played a little better. The Gray team surprised the Blue team and beat them badly to end up playing us for the championship. Dad says they changed their whole style of play and are going to be very hard to beat!
Wow what a championship! We won by two points in the hardest game I ever played in. We are the champions and we are done for this season, next season is going to be great, we have kids coming back and dad has already said he would return as head coach. We will defend our championship!

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