Girls' basketball, indoors and out

The weather report from Pittsburgh this week has included flurries, rain, sun, mud, and frost. The path from our house to the community center is nearly impassable with mud, and the ice patches are gone. Frankly, I miss the snow, though I'm not sure the girls do, because with it melting, the driveway is clear for dribbling.

The highlight of the week is definitely basketball. Much as I believe in free play, I often see that a particular sport is what draws the kids outside in the first place. This week, nearly every time we went outside to play, a basketball was motivating the action.

Emily's team features a full handful of very skilled girls and two mom-coaches who clearly love the game. Her lack of experience shows compared to many, but she is learning and motivated. Hazel participated in clinics run by the high school girls' team, and ended her season recently with 2 halftime dribbling shows by the Lil' Hoopers. I credit this clinic with convincing Hazel that basketball is centered on dribbling skills, because so far she can't hit the bottom of the net, much less the hoop. Nonetheless, Hazel loves her basketball, and she's gotten noticed for her ferocious drive to dribble around the court during Emily's practices and games.

The most exciting revolution about this for me is that for my daughters, basketball is a girls' sport. They have been to high school games, and a college game, and played their own games, but the only games they've witnessed have been played by women and girls, dribbling, running, shooting, sweating, scuffling, reaching, and fouling each other in their eagerness to get the ball. At Emily's games, players' brothers wait on the sidelines for their turn to shoot a few hoops after each quarter. In my world in Kentucky, it was the girls who went out at the quarters, in cheerleading outfits with pom-poms instead of balls. But here and now, when the ref blows the whistle, it is the girls who run out on the court for the real action.

Two firsts: one outside, one inside

This afternoon, despite the fact that Emily's basketball team lost their game (after winning the first 2), we all had reason to celebrate, as Emily made her first basket, a nice little layup at a moment when her team really needed her. We got home, got some food, and then, at Emily's request, went to the pond at a nearby park to ice skate.

Last night we went skating indoors at a rink crowded with teenagers and with music to urge us on, with a snack bar steps away, skate lessons to watch, and young hockey jocks to dodge. I think of this as the normal way to skate, since I had never, before tonight, been skating outside. It isn't something children growing up in Kentucky learn to expect, and plus, I'd never had my own skates. But it has been so frigid, and this park's pond is a shallow little water body which we've slid on before during the local winter festival, so we had a good idea it would be safe.

Another family was out tonight, too, a dad with two boys, complete with hockey sticks and pucks. I suspect the older boy was 5, a wickedly good little skater already. None of us is a great skater, but tonight we all got better. Hazel figured out how to propel herself forward without me or a wall - it seemed easier without so many people around, and also easier perhaps because the ice wasn't so smooth and fast as indoors. Emily, despite literally having two left skates due to my taking advantage of an end of season "bargain" last year, was whizzing around the pond, and had a great time skating fast and crash-landing into the snowbanks at the edge of the shovelled "rink".

It was fully dark when we stopped. I feel like we've finally participated in an ancient rite of winter, linking us to children we've read about in history, whose only concept of ice skating was outdoors. And though I've known for some time that I love snow in winter, tonight I finally learned to appreciate bitter cold spells, for giving us thick, safe ice for a chaos-free skate in the brisk night air.