Every season needs a good bench-clearing brawl

Basketball has been some fun this year. Our team started out kinda sucky. We lost the first two games. But then we started to gel. And to win.

One week I walked into the gym, and the team we were playing was in a huddle around the door. The coach was saying to his players, "This team has two tall players..." and one of the kids interrupted him to add, "And one of 'em's REALLY tall!" Yeah, My Kid's the "REALLY tall" one on the team. He's playing really well, and has had a few double-doubles.

Over the holiday break, one of the other coaches asked him to play on his holiday tournament team. They won the silver bracket, which means they came in third.

Back from the holidays, we were 2 and 2, and we played the team in first place. The team above, actually. Which was kind of weird because My Kid had just spent the holidays playing FOR this team, and now we had to play AGAINST them. But at least we knew all his offenses heh heh. We won.

Now 3 and 2, we played the new team in first place, the Mavericks. Beating them, we were tied with both the Bulls and the Mavs - all three of us were 4 and 2, but! Since we had beat them both head-to-head, that put us in FIRST PLACE as of last week. Woot!

This week we were a little concerned because two of our players - including our leading scorer - were sick. Big Daddy said to me last night, "We're gonna get our asses handed to us tomorrow - by the worst team in the league."

All our players showed up for the game, although I'm not sure they were all 100 percent. The score was a lot closer all game than it should have been. In the final quarter, we had pulled up by 5. There was 15 seconds left and one of the other players (Hunter) fouled one of our players (Skylar).

The ref blew the whistle. Skylar turned around and bumped Hunter with his shoulder and said something like "What the hell's your problem?" So Hunter tackled him. At which point Sklar's identical twin jumped in (of course he did) as did another of our players, Justin. Both our coaches (Big Daddy & the twins' dad), plus the other coach (who is Hunter's dad) AND Justin's dad were all in the midst of it immediately. Hunter was pulled back over to his bench, at which point one of our parents who was sitting behind that bench jumps up and starts yelling at Hunter.

It was CRAZY.

My Kid? He was down at the other end of the court, in case the other team got a fast break.

(We won.)