I coached my son's 3rd/4th Grade Jr. Jazz team in Saratoga Springs. I'll be honest the first few weeks I wasn't really enjoying myself and I could tell the boys really weren't either. It's been many years since I coached. We were only allowed 1 45 min practice a week.

Around the 4th Game everything just clicked and they played great the rest of the season. My son broke his wrist during the 2nd game.

The final game was last Saturday and there were 2 kids on the team that still didn't have a bucket all year, one of them my boy. At this level we still weren't keeping score and are required to distribute equal playing time as much as possible.

2 days before the final game my son had his cast removed and was allowed to play in the final game. Before we broke huddle I told the kids that "everyone shoots and everyone scores today". I have 2 really good players for their age on my team that take the majority of the shots and I'll be danged if they didn't spend most of the game looking for their teammates and having a ton of fun in the process.

The most shy kid on the team who hadn't scored all year, scored on our 1st 3 possessions. He was beaming. His Dad was in tears and I almost was also. I had to lower my head so people wouldn't see it.

All that's left was my boy. He'd put up 5 shots or so and each of them was so close, but none of them fell in. He'd been really struggling and depressed at not playing or scoring because of his broken wrist and I could tell he was trying to adjust. With about 1:30 left he went past a screen on an inbound play under the basket and swished it. He got swarmed by his teammates.

I cried.