First time head coach

Wednesday morning I wake up to an e-mail from my head basketball coach. He informs me that he will be out sick and will not be able to coach at our game as a result. Immediately my stomach begins to turn. I'm not too worried because the team we are playing is like 4th or 5th ranked and we are 2nd. But it still makes me nervous. I have to be the head coach. At least I was going to have a great assistant (Bonnie agreed to assist me).

Wednesday we were poised to take the #1 seed in our tournament. All we had to do is win our last 3 games and it would be ours. We play the current 1st ranked team today (Saturday) and the 3rd ranked team Wednesday. You can see the set up right? Everybody is going to take this game for granted. I did my best to make sure that wouldn't happen.

We started the game out really well. But after 4 minutes my two top players both had 2 fouls and therefore were benched for the rest of the half. Despite that we were up 21-8 at the end of the first quarter. I pulled the team together in the break and told them to keep fighting hard and I wanted the score to be 40-8 at half time. Well it was 25-12 at half... We kind of had an offensive slow down.

I was a little concerned about this but our defense was playing well. To make along story short our offense never got back into rhythm. At the end of the 3rd it was 29-20. And then at the end of regulation...34-34. Overtime! Not overtime. This is just what I didn't need. I'm thankful that we didn't lose. I couldn't have faced my head coach if that happened.

Thankfully overtime seemed to bring new life to the team. We nailed a 3 early and played intense defense. We knocked down a couple of mid-range jumpers and ended up pulling it our 44-38. I'm glad we won. I would have felt pretty awful otherwise. I think this experience has cemented in my mind that I do not desire to be a head coach for a while. Too much stress. I think I looked like this most of the game...