How did R wind up on the worst basketball team?

R had his first basketball practice/game on Saturday and it looks like he has ended up on the worst team ever!

My first clue should have been that his coach never called. I got in touch with the head of the b-ball league before Thanksgiving and asked when we should be receiving a call. He said by that weekend. Well T-giving weekend came and went and no call. So I wrote back to him on Monday.......If the games are starting this Sat. the 3rd, how come I haven't gotten a call. So he wrote back and said that we're on this guy Juan's team and here's the schedule. We should be getting a call from Juan soon. So Juan calls on Wednesday night and leaves a message. I am not prejudice by any means but the guy barely speaks English. Great. R should have a great season trying to understand this guy.

So Saturday comes and we get to the gym at 8:50 like Juan asked and no Juan. The other team coach is there, very organized and greeting people as they walked in. Our coach wasn't there. Finally our coach strolls in at around 9:00 and has a 15 minute meeting with the parents. Jeff went over and apparantly the guy was giving him his background and stuff. This is the first time he's worked with this age group, yada yada. Great, that's what R needs.

Meanwhile, I'm watching the other coach with his team, he sits them all down in a circle, hands out the shirts, splits them up with the 2 (yes 2) assitant coaches) and they start doing drills.

Our team is sitting around waiting for the coach who is working with one kid to get to the other kids on the team (we don't have any assistant coaches). Ryan is watching the other team. Very sad.

Every kid on Ryan's team is either Indian or Spanish. There is one other white boy who just found out about the league a week ago who lives in Plainsboro. The other team was all white boys and girls with kids around the same age as Ryan. Only 6 kids (apparantly out of 9) showed up for our team. Probably because the coach called so late in the week.

So they're supposed to have a half hour of practice and a half hour game with the other team. That turned into a 10 minute game with the other team because our team wasn't ready. And half of the other 50 minutes Ryan spent sitting and watching the other team practice. He's the best one on his team and the other kids need more instruction than he does.

This is going to be a long season. I pray that next week it gets better or I don't know what I'm going to do.