in search of a women's basketball league

With the demise of the Oracle Women's Basketball League, a bunch of us started scouring the Valley for a place to play. Because the San Carlos Women's League started way back in August, the closest program we could find was the Campbell Community Center Women's League, a solid 20 minutes south of Mountain View...and well worth the drive. The league consists of three levels: Novice, Lower Intermediate, and Upper Intermediate. Each level consists of 6 teams of about 9 players each, and each team plays every other team twice during the season. It's really very well organized, and apparently it's been around for 4-5 years now.

Anyway, we joined a Novice team, and started out the season barely beating a good team, and then somehow completely fell apart in our second game. We were disorganized, sloppy, out-of-sync, we were low on energy, and started bickering right before the half. Somehow we managed to mount a comeback, and we only lost by about 10 pts (yes, that did require a significant comeback). During practice on Sunday we ran zone defense drills, passing drills, layup drills, and did some scrimmaging, but more importantly we talked about who would play what position, who our starters would be, how people would sub in and out, and how people would give and receive criticism.

Today, we came out with high energy, getting off to an 13-2 start, and pretty much dominated the entire game. I myself took two shots early on, made one and barely missed one. I think I did a fairly good job of seeing the court and making good passes during the rest of the game; sometimes it's hard for me to know if I should be looking for more shots or just concentrating on creating opportunities for everyone else. Anyway, it was a good game all around, but we'll have to be careful not to rest on our laurels.

Some of the things that we need to work on:
- I need to do a better job of seeing the left side of the offense. Apparently our guards were getting free down low and I wasn't seeing them.
- We need to work on our post defense. Because we got burned baseline so many times last game, our outside low defenders were playing extremely conservatively, and we gave up too many perimeter shots. In general, we need to communicate more on defense.
- We need to work on our fast breaks. We have one of the fastest teams in the league, and we should take advantage.
- Some of our rebounders need to work on securing the ball or passing it back out quickly after grabbing the rebound.
- A few people need to learn not to shoot when they are too far from the basket and/or well defended.
- I need to get in shape! I was yelling for a sub midway through the first half...not good.
- We need to use our center more...she's tall, quick, has great fundamentals, and is a good shooting threat. I should work on finding a way to pass to her, to draw the defense up high.

In any case, it was a very satisfying game, and I'm looking forward to next week.