Now Playing: The Scraps

Intramural season for fifth graders is over, and Boys and Girls Club season for fifth and sixth graders begins. The Boys and Girls Club teams carry over from previous years, but since this is Emilio's first year, he's on the scraps team with other players who are playing for the first time. The Director of the Boys and Girls club has volunteered to coach the team, but he let all the parents know that he has a prior coaching commitment for a team in OK City and will often be unavailable. He ran a great practice on Wednesday, but we think the other teams have had more than one practice. At that first practice, he asked the players to let him know who among them was going to be his ball-handling press breaker. Emi raised his hand, and the job is his.

Emi smells a steal, seizes it, escapes on a break, and draws a shooting foul (not called, alas).

Emi loses his defender, drives, and dishes to the open man (Blake).

Emi drives, dishes, rebounds, and draws the foul.

Emi balls: Season One, Games Five and Last

The last day of Emi's intramural season--his first as a bballer--featured a double header for the Bananas: one game at 8:30 and another at 9:30. Captain Crossover played half of each game (we had ten players) and had a glorious day, full of highlights. He scored 22 points, including a season-high 14 in his final game as a Banana, which we won 24-19.

The Bananas, from left to right (top row): Warrick, Belen, Coach Marr (Fish's dad), Logan, and Fish(er); (bottom row): Callie, Luke, Case, Emi, Kendon, and Damian.

After the game, Coach Marr asked me if Emilio had told me that he had encouraged him to join their flag football team in the fall. He had. They play games on Monday and Tuesday nights. Coach Marr: "He's a natural athlete." True that.