Lady Eagles coast to victory, beat Vallejo 84-25
on December 20, 2012
Eleven games into the season and sitting five games over five hundred, the Kennedy High Lady Eagles basketball team is still learning what it means to be part of a team—or at least how to play like one.
Having just shellacked Vallejo High by 61 points, Lady Eagles head coach Rae Jackson said his team still lacks three key ingredients: focus, discipline and execution.
From the opening tip against Vallejo it was obvious the Lady Eagles were stronger and more athletic than their opponent. By the end of the first quarter Kennedy was already up 30 points.
From there on out the modest crowd saw Kennedy coaches platoon players to keep the score down-to-earth. It didn’t help. Vallejo only managed to score four points in the third quarter and two points in the fourth.
After the game Jackson told his players in the locker room that he understood they all wanted to pad their stats and score. But in the end it was the little things they didn’t get right. Dribbling with their heads up and recognizing defenses were two areas that needed special attention, he said.
“When you meet a team that’s just as skilled as you are, you need to be disciplined to execute your offense,” he said. “Our discipline is not quite there yet.”
To echo those points, Kennedy coach Tim Logan wrote the acronym TEAM on the whiteboard. Letter by letter he told the girls what they needed to do to win a crown.
“T is for trust,” he said and explained how Michael Jordan didn’t win his first NBA championship until nine years in the league because he didn’t trust his teammates.
“E is for effort,” Logan continued. “Part of winning is effort. If you don’t put 110 percent effort in anything you do in life you’ll fail.”
“A is for adversity,” a player shouted from a seat near her locker.
“Yes,” responded Logan as he circled the letter on the whiteboard. “This is what you face when you’re down by 10. But as a team you overcome it.”
“And ‘M’ is for maturity,” he concluded. “In order for you to do all these here you have to have maturity. There’s not one ‘I’ in it.”
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