For basketball players, the holiday break is a bit different than it is for a regular student, as we will practice and play games on 11 of the next 16 days.  Coming from someone who loves the game, it’s an exciting time of the season. But I always have an inward chuckle when we get back to school in January and everyone asks, “How was your break?”   

I’m not sure what a holiday break feels like, as I’ve coached over the New Year for the last 33 years, and that is one of the things that both excites and scares me about retiring. (The same can be said for Thanksgiving “break.”)  

As coaches we have to keep this in mind. Our players are giving up their breaks, too, and the last thing we want is for them to be sick of each other and us when January rolls around.  

The girls play at home tonight against Aloha.  It’s a game we should win, but as I mentioned last week, we have yet to play well at home, so….

On Tuesday we learned exactly how long it takes to get from CHS to Roseburg High going 45 MPH as we headed south to play the Indians.  In the middle of warm-ups, assistant Kevin Christie turned to me and said, “Coach, we could be in trouble tonight.” I nodded. He was right. Roseburg had size and quickness advantages on us. Their JV point guard would start for most varsity teams—this means their varsity point guard had to be really good. We were in trouble, indeed.

We started sluggishly and fell behind 30-21 at half.  Our goal is to only allow 36 points a game, so 30 in a half is very troublesome.  If RHS gets into the 50’s or 60’s, we have no chance as we don’t have that much firepower.  That first half of basketball, if that is the right term, was as bad as we’ve played in the two years I’ve been back at CHS.  Gross. Gross. Gross.

The second half didn’t start any better as RHS hit two shots to open the 3rd, and we were suddenly down 14 a couple of minutes into the quarter.  It was just about over at that point, and I’m sure the girls felt the bench’s frustration.  (Christie, BJ Basinski and I are all pretty loud. We were all aware of the dire straits we were in, and we were all pretty vocal.)  Whether that helped or not will never be known, but something sparked us and went on to outscore Roseburg 28-11 from that point on and won 49-45.  It was a great ending to a horrible beginning.

Domonique Andrews had a solid second half and led us to the win by hitting 7-8 free throws in the 4th.  Charlie Marcum kept us in it early and added to it late as she hit four 3 pointers, and Kaitlyn Perry and Ellie Basinski each had big 3 pointers along the way.  KP’s 3 came in the first half; she kept us within striking distance. Ellie came at a crucial time and extended our lead to more than one basket. Maddie McHone, Trinity Miller and Charlie worked the Roseburg guards pretty hard and forced the tempo once we were down by 14.

We need some consistency, but we are improving a bit each day.

Next week we head to a 3-day tournament in Astoria, then we come back to play a double header (boys at 6, girls at 7:30) on Jan. 4.  

You will be enjoying the end of your breaks. We will still be battling it out on the court.