I took some time off from reading this weekend to go to Josie's basketball game.  She plays in the parkboard league for girls 12 and under. 

I've seen a lot of basketball.  Not as much as some people I know, but more than normal people.  In the last twenty seven years, I've probably seen close to 2000 games, from kindergarteners who couldn't dribble to Div1 and professionals.  I've seen 23 point leads evaporate to losses, I've seen teams score ten points in under six seconds.  I've seen missed free throws tipped in with no time left on the clock to win a championship.  Last week I watched my team lose in overtime after being up by three with one second left in regulation.  I've seen teams lose twenty point leads in the last minute of a game to ever be comfortable with less than a thirty point lead.

I've seen players get their noses broken, their ankles dislocated, their corneas scratched; I've seen them carried out on stretchers and I've seen the injured come back in the second half to score thirty more points and lead their teams to victory.  I've seen players come to blows with team mates, oppononts and coaches.  I've seen fans attack players and coaches attack fans.

I've never seen what I saw at Josie's game before.  Not in the park league with little girls, anyway.

 In theory, basketball is a noncontact sport.  Anyone who's ever watched the game knows that there's always plenty of contact.  Part of the referees' job is to keep it from getting out of hand.  With these little kids, they give plenty of leeway as far as not calling traveling too quickly, and helping the kids learn the rules of the game without slowing things down so far that the kids would be bored to tears but they are usually  very strict when it comes to fouls.  Nobody wants Precious to ger hurt.  They call "jump ball" any time two kids look at the ball at the same time.

Some skinny little blonde was guarding Josie.  You would've thought she was playing in the WNBA.  She wasn't just on top of Josie, she was all over her.  Literally.  She bagan chest bumping Josie before the ball was inbounded.  She wasn't just leaning on Josie, either. She was bumping, pushing and shoving with her whole body as though it was a sumo wrestling match.  Contact?  I've seen dogs hump legs with less contact.  It was like watching a salmon trying to get upstream and Josie was the stream.  Josie tried elbowing the kid, harder and harder to get her off, to no avail.  The refs didn't seem to notice this assault as it went on.  The coaches did nothing.  I would've thought it was funny if I hadn't been able to see how upset Josie was getting.  She was throwing more and more of her weight into her elbowing back of this mental case.  Finally, in desperation, Josie faked an injury and took herself out of the game.  Her coach thought she was hurt because he didn't know she was crying tears of rage.

"I wanted to beat the tar out of that girl!" she stormed at me in the car on the way home.  "If I had stayed in there one more minute, I was going to slug her!  Is it against the rules to kick in basketball?"

Josie has earned her red belt in karate.  She can split a board with a kick.  I told her I was proud of her forbearance.  

"If that had happened to me when I was your age, I definitely would've punched that kid right in the stomach.  That'll not only get you thrown out of the game, it might get you kicked off the team and you don't want that."

"I wanted to kill her!"

In order to forstall Josie going all kungfu on her opponent in the next game, we talked about strategies to deal with that kind of defense.  We were still talking about it when we got home.  Zack listened to the whole story.

"She needs to learn how to deal with something like that without getting thrown out of the game." I said.  "Taking a foul is fine but you don't want to get thrown out."

"You don't know what you're talking about." Zack said to me.  Then he turned to Josie. "The next time it happens, slug her in the face. So you get thrown out; who cares?"

I can hardly wait for her next game.