The Fireballs

To be perfectly honest, I never thought Heather and her team would make it to the finals of the 3-on-3 tournament. Since they did, and since they had us laughing most of the weekend, I feel compelled to provide an update to my last post.

First of all, the girls all blamed Kasey for being in the tournament in the first place. She was the only one who wanted to do it, and, according to them, she forced them into it. I can believe that because she was already enlisting my help to get Heather signed up for next year.

Now these young professionals are still in good shape and they work out, but they are no longer in high school or college athlete shape. While they are still young, they are starting to complain of aches and pains after any strenuous physical activity. Heather has had a number of operations on one knee, and it appears she could use another. And, if you’ve ever played it, you know the game of basketball immediately sucks the air out of you.

Their team of four did well in the first game. They played loose, had fun, and made strategic use of their sub when one of them had to leave the court gasping.

Between games one and two, however, Kimmy succumbed to a migraine. I could actually see it in her eyes, and she ended up in the ER. (She is doing better now.)

That brought the team down to three players, which meant no subs. The second game did not go so well. Here are the girls after that second game where they are not quite looking like champs:

For the third game, they employed a new game strategy: Keep defense to the necessities, and conserve energy as much as possible on offense.

It worked.

By the end of the day on Saturday, there were three teams with a 2-1 record. Only two would move on to the finals, and the tie-breaker was total points scored. A tournament official totaled the scores and identified the other two teams as moving on – until an obnoxious parent (Dave) asked the official to recheck his arithmetic.

Our girls, still gasping for air and already starting to stiffen up, were not happy with Dave.

After a night and morning of icing and dosing up on Advil, the girls headed to the finals Sunday afternoon. I won’t go into details, but right before leaving for the game, Heather had a small crisis where she thought she was dying. I told her we would worry about it after the game.

During the game, the girls continued with their game strategy – expend energy only if it looked like there would be a good ROI. Late in the game, they were down by a pretty significant margin. At that point, a parent sitting on the sidelines (me) called a time out.

Just a quick aside on 3-on-3 rules: Baskets inside the 3-point line count for 1 point. Baskets outside the 3-point line count for 2. Winner is the team who gets to 16 first, but you have to win by two points unless time runs out.

I really don’t remember the exact sequence of events after that time out. All I know is it was intense, and our girls didn’t strictly adhere to their game strategy. I know at one point the score was 16-15 in favor of the other team. I also know each of our girls scored very key baskets during that time with Kat getting the final basket. And I know the final score was 18-16 in our favor.

I drove Heather back to her apartment last night. I had to carry her laundry basket down to the car and up to her room because she couldn’t. With every step she took going up the stairs, I heard an “ow.” I have no idea how she is managing today.

But who cares. They won the game.

The 2004 Fireballs

The 2016 Fireballs