Basketball (Double Trouble) Macy & Cooper 2023-2024

 This was an interesting and busy basketball season because both Macy and Cooper made their high school teams. Macy for the freshman girls and Coop for JV. We were not expecting this. Macy had been waffling about if she should even tryout, but the freshman team integrated with the highschool (and the highschool pulled up a ton of girls) so she was in prime position. Cooper was expecting to make his team but then at the team meeting was told they would be cutting several juniors, so he was nervous. There was a lot of whooping and celebrating that evening. 

Then we discovered that all their games would be at the same exact time. In different locations. 

Maybe this was a blessing in disguise because it cut down on our total hours at the gyms, but it was hard to have to leave one game early to catch the second half of the other or to just tell one kid (usually Macy, as the rookie) good luck and see ya afterward. But! They both made their teams! WOOOHOO! Sports are SO good for teenagers.

These pictures of the two of them (I forgot to get one of the both in uniform) is from the night they had to do all the fundraising. They had a little friendly competition on who could raise the most, mostly advertising their school fundraiser by text and my facebook account. Macy won. Cooper sent a group text and I think didn't put his full name on it or something, so everyone thought it was a scam, haha.

Although Macy won the fundraising faceoff, Cooper got to have professional photographers at several of his games. So this blog is mostly the Cooper basketball photo album. Sorry. But it's fun to see his facial expressions. One of the photos was even featured by a local sports blogger.  There are a few pictures of Macy at her games, and highlight reels for both of them at the end of the post.

You can see the big basketball poster on the wall of all the varsity players. Technically he was also on varsity but the juniors didn't really ever play. Another cool thing that will eventually be on the wall is a banner for Academic All-State Champs Boys Basketball because their team had the highest cumulative GPA this year in the state. I thought that was cool on its own and also cool because Leslie also has a state champs banner on the wall for marching band. 

Oh yeah, Luke played basketball, too. It seemed like such a short season compared to the high school teams. He made several buckets, including one game where he scored more on his own than the entire opposing team, haha. I didn't get many pictures at all and was kind of camera'd out by the time we would finally get to his games at the end of the week. It wasn't uncommon for us to have five games a week. I was glad that Boston didn't play city ball. He was a little bugged that I hadn't signed him up, but there was already too much going on and he needed to be doing lacrosse prep.

This one is fun, not only because of the smackdown but also because this is his buddy Peyton who played on the same team with him last year. Peyton had just barely rejected someone else and so this was a bit of payback. This is the one that was featured on the blog. (Mark bought the photo.) 

All this basketball made me wake up one morning with the idea to put these "team photos" together for my niece and nephew ballers for Christmas. It was super fun, and they all were a little different. Some had my brother Jake in the 5th spot, some had my sister Darcy in the 5th spot, one had my bro-in-law Jared (a Shelby Coyote!) in the 5th spot, and when I eventually get around to doing my own kids', they will have Mark (a Granite Farmer😆) in the 5th spot because obviously I never played.

I wonder how much basketball my Dad and grandparents (and great-grandparents) get to watch on the other side.

Macy's first tipoff went well and they scored, but when I was telling the guys back home about it later, they thought it was so funny that I was making a big deal about the tipoff. They teased me about tipoffs the rest of the season. 

Here is Cooper's highlight video that he put together for this year. Coop is #1. He had a lot of threes and a lot of what his coaches post-season called his "wow passes." When the coaches asked him at the end of the year how he would describe his strengths, he accurately told him that he is pretty good at reading the court and seeing the plays. (He loves thinking about plays and designed one that he named Egypt but I can't tell you about it in case they use it again next year.) His goal was to have the highest number of assists on the team this year. He was a close 2nd on that but he did have the highest assist to turnover ratio. Also the lowest turnover rate. He tied for the highest 3pt percentage and highest true shooting percentage. 

We were mostly happy that he played so much more this year and did awesome.

Here is Macy's highlight video based on the not-very-much filmtime I got on her this year. She had a ton of blocks and rebounds but I think I only have a couple here on this reel. Macy is #20. Blue uniforms. We were super excited for her growth this year and that she was able to be on the high school team with real practice and an awesome coach.