Basketball Tournament

Cooper's middle school basketball team decided to compete in a tournament in Beaumont this weekend. We were up and out early Saturday morning.

 They played their first game at 11:00 against Twenty Nine Palms. It was a close, exciting game, and we won by 4 points. The second game was against the Beaumont Select team at 3:00. They are huge, and very, very good. They took it to us, and we suffered a big loss. We had quite a wait until the next game at 9:00pm. The coaches had gotten a room at a nearby hotel room, so we headed there to hang out during some down time and order pizza. The parents gathered in the lobby and the kids spent time running around the hotel, swimming a bit, playing games, etc. One of the parents brought up the uniforms that had just been delivered so the coaches handed them all out. You would've thought it was Christmas morning for these boys, they were excited.

 They looked sharp in their new uniforms. They got a set for home games, a set for away games, shooting shirts, warm-up pants, and a bag. These boys have so much fun together, and it was great to be around them for the weekend. 12 & 13 year old boys are an interesting group! We were missing a few from our team, but these guys had a fun time.

 Our 9pm game against Big Bear turned out to be a huge win for us.

 We got home about 11:30pm and we were out the door at 7am to be back for a 9am game. We were up against Twenty Nine Palms again, and were down 2 players from yesterday. But the boys played hard, Coop had a great game, and we won by a much bigger margin.

 Somehow I missed pictures the rest of the day! We played the Beaumont All Star team at 11am, and won, which put us in the championship game at 1pm. It was us against the Beaumont Select team again, so we knew our chances were slim. Since they'd been in the winners bracket, this was only their 4th game of the weekend. We were on game 6 and our boys were exhausted! They fought hard, but couldn't get the win. It was a much closer game though, and our coach was so impressed with this group.

 Since it had been a really long weekend, we decided not to wait another 2 hours for the awards ceremony. We picked up our trophies and took some photos.

 James got our MVP award, he played some incredible ball this weekend!

 Zoe was able to join us on Sunday (she had rehearsals on Saturday) and cheered on the team. We stopped for some celebratory yogurt on the way home.

It's been a long, but fun weekend! Tomorrow is the first game of the official middle school season. Hope these boys can get some rest in the next 24 hours!