The writing's on the wall

Another day being Basketball Mom. Up waaaaay too early after a very late night (couldn't sleep, stayed up too late) to get CarbBoy to his set of league matches at Grauhlet. Somehow contrived to get a bit lost on the way, well, not really lost - I just switched into autopilot and started driving to TallGirl's art class. Still, we were no later than anyone else. CarbBoy had a rather delightfully easy first match - they won 20-0 against the local side (counted in baskets, not points at this age) but from comments from other parents in the crowd, I think the judges just stopped counting at 20. Not bad for a match lasting 12 minutes... Anyway, CarbBoy scored 19 of them. The remaining matches were fine, save for one against our first team, with bullyboy leading the charge (literally). Despite being told off several times by his coach and by the ref, he continued to push kids over and act like a jerk. So the coach took him off.

Back then through the rain (and the cold - it is now officially cold again, a max of 8 degrees today) to swap children and ferry TallGirl to her league match at home. I have to say, it was the best I've seem them play. After a couple of recent losses, and some harsh words from their coaches, they really pulled it out of the bag today. They were up against a strong team (who had a girl so tall that even when our girls jumped as high as they could they couldn't match her for height and she wasn't even on tippietoes) and matched them basket for basket up to half time. The parents on the touchline were casting questioning looks at each other when our coach called a timeout with 4 seconds on the clock before half time. But oh boy did that work:

Girl 1 throws the ball in to Girl 2, who has run into space. She hurls it an impossible distance to Girl 3, out alone sprinting down the touchline. She bounces twice, throws it in to Girl 4 who pops it straight into the basket. The hooter for half time went before the ball even hit the ground.

And the crowd went wild.

After half time the other team were destroyed, scoring only 9 points in that half. I think we have a good coach. He was some sort of national coach who, if I understood the gossip right, has 'stepped back' to local coaching so he is around more to be a Dad to his new family. Whatever the reason - he's great.

Later, TallGirl and I did DIY shopping for Mr B, spent her jewelry voucher from last night's loto on a fancy new watch for her (realising that a 20 Euro voucher is all well and good, but not when the cheapest necklace in the shop is 240 Euro....) then home for some slobbing around, shouting at the rugby on the telly (early, exciting phase) and sleeping (later dull phase).

Nothing at all planned for tomorrow. Which feels rather good.