This had been a strange and difficult basketball season.

I guess I can't even remember the summer, but everything seemed fine way back then. Coach A was the new coach, and he seemed young and cute dressing up for the games and having the team dress up too sometimes. It was like he was modeling himself after Pat Riley or Phil Jackson.

G started in the first scrimmage of the "season". Then coach started to not put him in. Then he didn't play in 3 games in a row. Then he got in and took a charge and got stitches.

Then he didn't play in 5 games in a row.

This was very hard for K and I. Everything seemed to shift before our eyes. Parents whose kids started to play more are friends of ours, and so that felt funny. Other parents started saying dumbass things like "We need a bench!" to people whose kids were sitting on the bench. Suddenly I was cheering a lot less, and caring about refs calls a LOT less. This is something we'd never experienced before, and so it was a shock.

In fact, it was a struggle not to go to the dark side and actually root for the other team because, after all, you didn't really want them to win if your kid wasn't playing. We didn't know what to say to the other parents after the games. In fact, we both got to the point where we couldn't even stand it anymore and vowed to not go to anymore games. But luckily we both got out of that mode of thinking before the next game.

Then there was the World of Warcraft aspect and K wanting G to work out more to be more competetive and G resisting because ALL he wanted to do was play that stupid game. And K not being able to not talk about it for even 5 freaking minutes! I may have mentioned, I told G he had to work it out with his dad because I didn't want to have to get a divorce over WOW.

Then our parents came out and he started to get to play more. Will we ever know why? Why did he stop playing him in the first place? And what about all the seniors who didn't get to play? What's the point of having a bench if they don't get any practice?

But all in all I'm proud of all of us for coming through it. G really took it the best of all of us. Neither K nor I actually stopped coming to the games, nor did we leave in the middle like another parent did one time. And gradually G got to play more and more toward the end of the season, so K's parents got to see him play a good amount. And he played well when he was in there, but it was hard for him to feel like he had to prove himself right away every time.

I think I feel the worst for the seniors. It about breaks my heart. This was a terrible season for them. A was a co-captain, and by the end was barely getting to play. I can see it maybe if the strategy was to win and so he couldn't play the seniors, but we DIDN'T win and in fact had one of our worst seasons ever. So the coach may be in trouble too, I don't know. My Dad said he was outcoached in the games he saw, so maybe this coach is really no good! I feel sorry for him, but I think he really screwed up this season for a lot of people.

But a couple of good things came out of it, hopefully. G is going out for track now (high jump), and that might open up more interests or options. I've stopped yelling at refs so much, to that's good. And I've become more determined to get G onto a traveling team than ever, since I can't count on High School to do jack.