KoKo's Tournament

Spent Saturday up in Warroad at KoKo's 8th grade basketball tournament.

After a looooong ride north, we made it to the school just in time to see the girls square off against Greenbush. They beat them twice, once in double overtime there and once soundly in RLF. However, they came up just short in their first game, losing 22-23.

Of course, it is easy to blame the officials, after all you never really know what kind of reffing you're going to get at these tournaments. When Kristie used to coach 5th and 6th grade basketball, tournaments like these were the worst. The organizers often had to resort to using high school students as officials. The only problem with this is that they are either afraid to call fouls or more interested in trying to shoot three pointers or dunk during time outs and half time. One parent oberved, "If we get good officiating, we can't be beat."

I don't know about that. The officiating was not the greatest, but it's not like they favored one team. They at least called some fouls, which sometimes is all you get.

There was a good wait until RLF squared off against Warroad in their second game. This tournament had a much better format that the CYBA (Crookston Youth Basketball Association) tournament. That is a farce. I recall the format usually looking like this Crookston's A team facing off against two significantly smaller schools for the first bracket. Then they'd take other schools (RLF or TRF) and stack them against the Fargo or GF schools in the opposite bracket. That way Crookston is almost assured of a place in the championship. If they earn that. Fine. But at least evenly stack the format.

Anyway, this tournament was pretty well stacked. RLF trailed by ten at halftime against Warroad, who put the press on the Eagles, and they struggled mightily. However, Warroad (for some unknown reason) took off the press, and RLF was able to run and gun and pulled out a two point win. However, RLF was up by four points with just a few seconds left before they gave up a cheap basket to Warroad. This would prove costly because overall points scored would factor into deciding the tournament champion.

RLF faced an unfamiliar team in Big Fork for their final game. This was a bloody battle with an utterly classless team. I never appreciated the teams we play on a regular basis (the Greenbush girls attended the RLF games and cheered us on while they also talked outside in the hall and wished each other good luck).

It didn't help that the officiating was terrible. The officials didn't call a traveling foul until the second half. They made the officials from the first game look like NBA caliber. The point of officiating is to benefit each team, not hurt them. I mean what good is to practice some of the finer skills when poor officiating renders those skills obsolete when they never call anything. When officiating is this horrible, it just hurts both teams. Of course, I am biased, but RLF was clearly the better team. Big Fork could hardly get the ball up court without double dribbling, traveling, or carrying the ball - and sometimes all in one possession.

Worse yet, they swung their elbows like they were in a back alley and threw their shoulders like they were playing for the football team. At one point, one of our players took an elbow to the face as the opponent was surrounded (but because she was never taught how to dribble out or pass) and because the refs never called traveling, she was allowed to swing her elbows for several seconds. Of course, by this time our player's mouth took a shot and she tumbled to the floor, battered and bloody. The girl was finally given a technical foul and benched by the official (Big Fork's coach never said a word to her) nor did the girl show the slightest inkling of remorse.

We joked that we should have waited to schedule KoKo a dentist appointment where she had to have seven baby teeth pulled (right around $114 a tooth) when playing this team could have done the job for us!

Finally, the RLF coach put on a full court press and broke the game wide open, allowing RLF to win by nearly 20.

KoKo's team eventually finished third. Warroad took first, though we beat them, because they scored more points in their wins.

Even though lost out on the championship because of their one point loss to Greenbush, the girls were upbeat and happy.

Monday the have a tough challenge, traveling to TRF. Last year they split with TRF, but this year TRF has handled them twice. We'll see if RLF can pull out a win this time.