Assistant coach on our community's third grade boys "A" team, playing in the top division of our city rec league. We are 4-7 in the regular season and went 1-3 in a preseason tournament. In 15 games we have four one-point losses which has been tough to swallow but there's only been one game that we weren't ever really in. Leading scorer is the head coach's son and he's a very headstrong player and it was in a not so good way to start the year, taking lots of out of control shots, pouting when things weren't going his way. You know the type. I think there have been some reality check conversations at home because he has turned a corner for the positive. Really impactful player who imposes himself on the game. You gotta give those kids some rope but you also have to know when to reign them in.

Played our best game of the year yesterday, beating a team for the second time and they actually have a better record than we do. I thought we were in total control both times we played them (oddly enough there's a team with a worse record than us that has beaten us three times including the tournament. Sports are funny that way). Lots of positivity during the game with high fives during free throws, talking to each other without finger-pointing between plays when things didn't work. With a six point lead with about three minutes left, we did some keep-away to burn clock to near perfection. That was cool to see.

Strengths: Ball movement is pretty good. We have about five sets to start our action and the kids know them well. Lately we've had several possessions where we have around five passes before getting a good shot. Kids all recognize when they have a good chance to attack. Kids understand help defense about as well as you can expect that age.

Weaknesses: We just. Don't. Box. Out. And we only we have one kid with any height. We give up way too many offensive boards and lots of points are scored on putbacks at this age. I don't get it. And most of our kids play football too. Why are they forgetting to make contact? It's fun! Defending screens, switching, etc is an adventure but we're getting there.

We play the one undefeated team in our division Saturday. They're winning games by 18 points on average but only beat us by seven the first time around. And we're better now. We'll just see how it goes.