some other journals i read

melty
home of the way-cool and multimedia hockey diaries

simply me
from the town of, lincoln, nebraska

more than a mom
yes indeed!

catnip cafe
jamaica needs to write more often!

the bliss point
derek has a young daughter, some of his best entries are about her

j seer
this is different, see what you think

S'been two weeks since I played basketball. No games, no practice, not even bouncing the ball.

I started out, on this site, trying to write The Basketball Dairies. A weekly account of the team I played for. But I gave up fairly soon. Partly I didn't have the time to keep it up, and partly I couldn't find a voice for it, didn't know how I should tell the story. Soooooo, that means you're going to get a little bit of it here.

The team I play in is called Cavaliers. There's eight in the team, and four of them are new this year. I'm second oldest in the team, by a long way, and it's the tallest team I've ever played in. At just over 6', I'm third shortest.

Since 1990, when I came back to New Zealand, this is the sixth year I've played for the Cavaliers in this particular grade. The other two years I didn't play at all. In those previous five years, we've got the final twice and the semi-final twice - and lost each time.

In all the years I've been playing basketball, over 20, I've only ever won a competition twice. I feel my sporting clock ticking.

We are coming second in the competition. Today we played the other second placed team. We won 104 - 70. In technical sporting terms, that's called a "dicking". Next week we play the top team, and following that it's the semi-finals. The top team plays the fourth placed, and second plays third. The two winners play off in the final.

Today we played in a zone. I could count on less than the fingers of one hand the number of times I've played in a team that's scored 100 points. I could count on one finger the number of times I've done that against the third best team in a league.

I'm still getting over the flu, so struggled for fitness in the game, but played pretty well. As I've gotten older, I've gotten slower, but I'm smarter. I read the game  well. I think I'm a good influence on the team when I'm playing. I'm the team captain.

Okay. I'm sorta superstitious about sport, but absolutely none of my superstitions have ever stood up to the test of time, so I know it comes down to how you play on the day. Which is why I'm tempting fate here.

We are going to win our basketball competition. We have three more games. We play the top team next week, then the semi-final, then the final. We're going to win all three games.

You read it here first.