Alta Basketball

Last week I was able to go to Colorado with my little sister and her basketball team. Rayma was going to be a driver, but because she took so much time off to be with my dad during his heart surgery -- she couldn't take four more days off to drive my sister and her team. I volunteered to drive, (if I could drive my dad's PRIUS ... SO NICE!) Some of these pictures are not from the trip -- my camera died ... so I took them from my sister's myspace page. I just like having a visual. Here is the top 10 memorable moments from the trip, (keep in mind that these are 15 - 17 year old girls):

10. The word "Stephanie" is long and is hard to yell. I found out that Steph's team doesn't call her "Stephanie" or even "Steph" -- they call her "Stohel" -- her last name. The best part is that there are members of the team that don't even KNOW her first name. I of course don't call her Stohel -- when I referred to her as Steph -- they looked at me puzzled ... "Who?"

9. On the first day there I decided to go out to lunch while everyone else was at the team meetings. I sat down all by myself at Red Robin with my book and ordered. I got my meal, took a couple bites of my chicken sandwich, and sat to enjoy my afternoon. I soon decided to check my phone to see what time it was. I had a voicemail from Steph -- "Jen we need you to be here at 1:30 to drive us to our game". I checked the time -- 1:22. "UM ... CHECK PLEASE! " I ended up leaving a $10 tip because there wasn't time to get my change.

8. Within 10 minutes of being on the road we had named my dad's GPS system Susan. We all called it that for the rest of the trip. On Wednesday I took one of the coaches and one of the players to the small airport in Grand Junction. As Coach L was leaving she said politely ... "Thank you Susan".

7. Since I was hanging out with a bunch of basketball players -- it was natural to keep track of the scores of the NBA Finals throughout the evening. The Lakers were getting KILLED! There were two girls on the team that were big Lakers fans. We couldn't help but rub it in a bit -- their retort ... "They'll come back next year ... just you wait and see!" I mean they lost by 40 ... shameful!

6. Being in the passenger seat, Steph was in charge of the music. I would guess that the average playing time was about 17 seconds before she had to move to another song ... man that girl has A.D.D.!

5. This camp was a co-ed camp. There were boys everywhere -- there was even an employee in charge of making sure that there was no "camp babies" when it was all said and done. Because there were boys everywhere one girl, Mae, found it necessary to say "Haeeeey" to each one she passed. At one point Erin yelled loudly ... "he isn't even that cute!" The response ... "SO?"


4. One night when we were walking back from a game Mae and Erin were ahead of two girls that they thought were their team mates. They were yelling all sorts of obscene names to them -- thinking that they were just playing! These girls started yelling back challenging them to fights and such. It didn't take long before Erin and Mae realized that these were not team mates -- but two girls that they just ticked off. It was hard for them not to run away ... but they definitely picked up their pace!

3. After one of the games Steph's teammate, Lexi, asked Steph for a drink. She returned the water bottle and Steph threw it into her backpack. About 5 minutes later when Steph was getting ready to go she opened her bag to find a puddle of water at the bottom and her phone floating in the middle of it! Apparently the lid of the water bottle wasn't closed! She had a mild tantrum right there. She was yelling at me, at her teammates and was frantically trying to dry her phone. The poor boys next to us were trying so hard not to laugh! "I can't deal with this ... I'm going to watch JV!" she cried ... I took the phone from her and went to buy a small bag of rice so that it would dry out the insides of her phone, (she asked if we could go to the cafeteria and ask for some of the rice we ate at dinner ... um cooked rice won't really work dear!) She probably had to tell the story 7 times that night. Poor Lexi -- she felt bad. The rice worked -- her phone is still kickin'

2. My little sister's team did quite well! Their ending record was 9-1 losing in the championship game to this - almost pro - team. During one game the previous day Erin was going in for a drive and the ref was in her way. She yelled ... "MOVE!" I could tell that the coach was a little embarrassed -- she said: "We have a fast team -- you have to keep up!". HAHA

1. The best 7 seconds happened at the end of the 7th game. Alta was down by one. A girl shot, missed and Steph rebounded. There were 3 girls on top of her and Steph was fierce. She ended up getting fouled. They took it under the basket -- passed it in -- Becca shot ... but missed. Hayley put up a shot -- the buzzer rang -- SWISH! They won by just one point. AMAZING!

Steph -- thanks for letting me go! I hope that I wasn't the biggest tag along of all time! It was a lot of fun and I would do it again in a heartbeat!