4th Grade - Wainwright

Eagles, That was a nail-biter! It was our first game that came down to the final seconds, and it was soooo exciting! Your coaches hair got thinner and grayer because it was so tense. You really gave all the fans their money's worth this night. We know the end result wasn't what you wanted, but you guys played great. Every team has to go through games like this to improve. Every dribble, every pass, every shot feels sooooooo important. We practice and practice, but there's no substitute for close game experience, and that's what you got tonight. You all played very well and, as always, we're very proud of you, and we know your parents are too. St. Ambrose played tough, they switched their defense around a lot and had a few girls who were very aggressive, and who drove to the basket very well. Learn from that. See that it can be done and know that you can do it, too. Think about what it will take to stop them from doing that next time. The coaches will be doing that, too. We put in a new play for this week, and we had our 1's calling those plays for the first time. Our practices our short, and we know everybody can't make every practice. We're learning on the fly, and you're doing a great job with all this new stuff. There were a few times tonight when our plays worked beautifully. It's only going to get better. All right, you've waited long enough. Here are the point totals: Abbi - 6 Ellie - 2 Emma - 4 Olivia - 2 Don't let the results of this game get you down. If you're mad we didn't win, turn those feelings into harder play for the next game. and the game after that, and the game after that. We see improvement every game, but we know how good you can be. We know you can keep getting better each and every game. ___________________________

What a great game! Yeah we know it is tough to lose, but you all played very well and sometimes the other teams comes out on top. In fact (allow Coach Tim to put his engineer hat on for a minute) the score ended up 21 to 9. This means, Guilderland scored 12 more point than us (or 6 baskets). Our games are 24 minutes long which means that Guilderland only scored 1 more basket than us every 4 minutes (that is how long each group of girls play between substitutions). We think that is pretty good. To us, that is a close game. Well that is enough math for a Saturday night. As we mentioned at the game, we are very proud of the way you all played. Coach Tim talked to the referee after the game and she was amazed at how much our team has improved since the Niskayuna game, and we agree. Our defense was outstanding tonight. You were very aggressive and there were a lot of jump balls. It was tough on offense. We give a lot of credit to Guilderland, they also played tough defense and didn’t give us too many open shots. But when you think about our first couple games, 9 points is pretty awesome. As we mentioned before (and will no doubt mention again), we don’t like to make a big deal about the points as there are a lot of other things you all are doing out there that doesn’t show up on a score sheet, but here they are: Abbi - 3 Olivia – 4 Sarah – 2 Well we have a couple practices this week and two games this coming weekend. You all have been working really hard and it shows. We feel that with the effort you all have been making these close games will start to turn around as the season continues. Once again, we could not be more proud of how well you all are doing. Keep up the hard work, it is paying off. ___________________________

Wow! The Eagles Soar to a 46-12 Victory! We couldn’t be more proud of all of you. As we mentioned at our first practice, teamwork will be the key to winning for us. And we won this game as a team. Everybody scored, everybody played aggressive defense and everybody played a role in our offense. Abbi and Emma did a terrific job as point guards, Kate and Katie played an exhausting first half and were key in creating open space for our shots, Sarah and Lindsay played awesome both on defense and offense down low by the basket and Ellie and Mary were challenged with learning a new position at the beginning of the game and did a superb job in both positions. Although points are only one part of the game, we know you all like to see them. So, here they are: Abbi – 6 Ellie - 4 Emma – 12 Kate – 8 Katie – 2 Lindsay – 2 Mary – 8 Sarah – 2 We are also very proud of how much you all have learned and improved. Your hard work in practice and at home is paying off. We challenged all of you to learn a new offense this week and with only one practice to figure it out, we ran it in the game and you all did awesome. On top of this, we also had the additional challenge of adjusting our offense during the game depending on the defense the other team played. During all of this, you played great and you played as a team. Finally, we are also very proud of you for showing outstanding sportsmanship. The Coaches ___________________________

Eagles, Just in case we forget to mention it sometime, for every game we have this season, we'd like you to arrive at the game 30 minutes before the scheduled game time. This gives us plenty of time to get warmed up and organized before the start of the game. If you're running late, give Coach Dave's cell phone a call (301-4406), just to let us know. That way we can still set our lineup. Thank you, The Coaches ___________________________

I thought now might be a good time for a quick explanation of how the Schedule page works on the website. When you click on "Schedule" on the menu to the left, you come to a page that shows the last 5 games we've played and the next 5 games we have coming up. You can change the number of games displayed from 5 up to 100, so you can see our whole season ahead (just kidding, changing it to 15 will suffice.) When you're viewing the schedule, there might be a little icon to the right of the team that we're playing. That's the "Notes" icon, and if you click on it, pertinent info, such as directions to the gym, will pop up. The Location column gives you a link that will send you to a Yahoo map for the gym. However, I've found some gyms don't have valid, Yahoo-approved addresses, so it only gets you in the vicinity. We're trying to get accurate directions to all the locations we're playing at, and will post them as a Note to that particular game. You might also check the "Locations" page on the menu on the left. This lists most of the different gyms/schools throughout the region, and many have directions written out. I guess it wasn't such a quick explanation after all. ___________________________