Our First Upward Experience

Carson has been begging to play basketball for the past two years, but the only league he was old enough for was LCAA. Our previous experiences with them were not great, so we decided to make him wait. Now the time had come for him to play Upward. He was counting down the days from sign-up to his first practice to his first game. He was super excited. Olivia had just finished Fall soccer, but Upward also has cheerleading available starting with four year olds. We decided to go ahead and sign her up as well thinking it would give her something to do during his games. After a few practices and being frustrated with her coach, we got a schedule for both of them. To our surprise, Olivia does not cheer at one of Carson's games the whole season. The cheer teams rotate cheering for girls and boys at each of the two gyms. Now our Saturdays consist of basketball in the morning and cheer in the afternoon or vise versa. Carson's first game was Saturday at 8:30 am, and Olivia didn't cheer until 5:30 that afternoon. What a mess, but boy was it fun to watch.

Carson hustled pretty well, but all the boys had a hard time with offense and defense because they normally practice on a fourth of the court. Games are played on half of the court, so they got confused quite often when their team got the ball. You can't press either, so when the other team would get the ball, they'd have to stop the game, get the defense to the other end of the floor, and then proceed from there. It was quite hilarious to watch the action. Carson had a very hard time on offense. The boys are matched up according to how they scored in their tryouts. They are given a colored wristband that matches the boy they have to guard the entire time. He would find his yellow guy and guard him the entire time, on defense and offense. It was hysterical. He would be down in defensive position with his back to the ball whenever his team was bringing it down the floor. He had a ton of fun though, so we can work out the rest of the details later.

This was his position the entire game Passing the ball in He got a little bored on the bench

Olivia looked super cute in her cheer uniform. She was also very excited about her first game. She kept asking on the way to and at Carson's game if we brought her megaphone, pom poms, and cheer suit. We had to explain over and over again that it wasn't her turn yet, but once her game arrived, we couldn't calm her down. She did so good yelling and saying the cheers, but it was sort of hard to put it all together with the motions. The boys who were actually playing ball were in like 5th grade or so. They were HUGE compared to these tiny 4-6 year old girls who were cheering for them, but the girls were not deterred. They yelled their loudest and put on a great show. It was also a lot of fun to watch.





Although the scheduling makes for a long and full Saturday, it's so worth it to see my kids out there doing what they love to do.