Emma was given the opportunity to play basketball this year on the 5th and 6th grade basketball team for Rogue River. Emma did good, especially considering it was her first year of playing basketball on a team. She has attended basketball camps before but they usually work on individual skills which is significantly different then playing on a team. Emma was mostly dedicated to defense and usually played defense even when she was supposed to be playing offense. It reminded me of the story that my 6th grade teacher told us about the young player that he had that he gave specific instructions to stay with his guy, after a few minutes he was looking for the player and found him standing in a defensive stance in front of the player that he was assigned to guard even though that player was on the bench. It was exciting for Emma but at times she was a little intimidated by the other girls. One game we were playing a great team with only 6th graders and they played hard physical basketball and were up by 20 points or more. Emma played in the first quarter and did not go in the rest of the game. After the game the coach came to talk to us and he told us that he asked Emma to go in throughout the game and Emma (who always sat right by the coach) would tell him "No, I am fine right here," The coach then laughed and said that he did not blame her and figure that he would not have wanted to play against those girls either.
