Courtney's head coaching debut

Well, this is what Courtney has been working for the last 6 years. His first game as a head coach. He could barely sleep the night before and it was such an exciting night.

The first game was supposed to be against Pittsburgh, but they are still in the play-offs for football, so no basketball game for them. That's what happens in a small town when all your players are football and basketball players. So, they had to forfeit the game. Courtney really wanted to get a game on the schedule so he called Atlanta (my district). Now, Queen City and Atlanta are HUGE rivals, but have not played eachother in about 5 years. Atlanta is now a 3A school and QC is 2A. But since it is a pre-district game, the two coaches agreed on playing eachother. Courtney was so excited about bringing back the Atlanta/QC game. Let me just tell you, so were the kids. The crowd was huge, standing room only and the kids were going nuts. To all my Holdenville friends--think Wewoka/Holdenville games. Nuts. They were afraid there may be fights between student fans, but everyone used a fair amount of self-control and didn't do anything too stupid. Our student fans call themselves "Bleacher Creatures" and they dress up in wigs and crazy clothes, so that was fun.

So, onto the game. We ended up losing 55-61, but it was one of those games that goes down to the wire. QC led for most of the first half, but got down in the second half. We spent the whole second half trying to pull ourselves out of the hole. But the boys did not give up and they fought hard until the end. With 10 seconds left, we were down by 4, and in basketball, that is certainly doable, but we just couldn't pull it out. It was a very exciting, loud, high energy game.

I was so proud of Courtney and of the boys. It was fun to see Courtney as THE coach out there.

Rallying the boys before the game

Tip off

Coach
Time-out, strategizing

Come on! Get the ball to LA!!!

One more thing that was too funny that I just have to share. After everyone cleared the gym, Courtney sat in one of the chairs from his bench and put his elbows on his knees and his head in his hands and was just looking down at the floor (can you visualize?) and he sat there for a minute and then said, quite profoundly, "I am wearing shoes that do not match." Indeed, he was wearing two different black shoes!! It was hilarious. I, being the nice wife I am, starting laughing and called over the other wives to check out my husband's mismatched shoes. He was a tiny bit preoccupied as he got ready for the game, I suppose!

I had to document that moment on the blog. :)