Jaelyn, Sports, and her Daddy

I finally talked with Jaelyn’s basketball coach tonight.  Due to some issues with my home phone, she was unable to get through to me about starting practices.  Jaelyn starts practices next week and games start in January.  It is so hard to think of watching Jaelyn play basketball without Scott.  Basketball was one of Scott’s two favorite sports, volleyball being the other one.  He would have gotten so much pleasure out of watching her play.  It is particularly bittersweet since Scott was playing basketball just before his death.  I’m glad that Jaelyn no longer seems to be avoiding sports and activities that remind of her daddy.  It is going to be pretty busy until around the middle of January – now she has basketball practices two times each week, soccer games once a week until the middle of January.  I think that the soccer games end in January the same weekend that basketball games start which then run through March 9^th.  I’m hoping there will be a break after that before spring soccer starts. 

Jaelyn is doing so well with soccer, I am grateful that Jaelyn was able to participate in a winter league for soccer with the same coach and group of girls from her outdoor team through Northern Lebanon.  Jaelyn has a truly amazing and dedicated soccer coach.  Jaelyn and all the other girls have learned so much from her through the fall and now into the winter.  We have enjoyed watching Jaelyn and her focus when she is on the soccer field.  She doesn’t enjoy playing offense, would rather play defense.  This use to frustrate Scott – I think he wanted more of the excitement that comes with offense and the thrill of scoring goals.  Jaelyn is happy to play defense and she is really good.  If she gets her foot on that ball, it is definitely going down field – often with a lot of force and over everyone’s heads!  It is so nice to see the girls working together as a team in each game.  This is why they are so successful and have won both games so far in the indoor league and won all but one outdoor game.    

I am particularly proud of Jaelyn’s sportsmanship when she plays sports.  She never gets frustrated or angry at other players when she is playing.  She never trash talks. I believe a lot of this is due to how Scott taught her sports.  He tried to stress the enjoyment of the game.  Jaelyn often didn’t want to hear his coaching and would get frustrated easily.  However, she doesn’t do that for her coaches and didn’t do it to Scott when he coached her indoor soccer team last spring.  Scott very rarely lost patience with her when she would get mouthy or get frustrated.  He was so good at teaching/coaching sports.  I am sad that his teaching/coaching in Jaelyn’s life was so short.   Scott took great pride in Jaelyn’s physical abilities and loved teaching her new skills or sports.  Scott taught her how to kayak, how to fish, play tennis, learn swimming skills, ride her bike, play basketball, play volleyball, play baseball, etc.  He had a patience with teaching her that I don’t have.  Neither Jaelyn nor I am very patient, so we tend to clash in certain areas.  I miss Scott balancing me out in those areas and providing Jaelyn with those skills that I can’t teach her (or can’t teach her nearly as well as Scott could).