Summer Games

**Thanks for the pictures Heather! I love blog stealing!**

This last week has been like a flash back in time. Somehow, we thought it would be a good idea to get a team together and play basketball in the Utah Summer Games. Never mind the fact that most of us haven't played competitive basketball since high school. And never mind the fact that we have 19.5 kids between us. We thought it would be fun.

And it was fun. It was fun to get together with girls I haven't spent a lot of time with in years and play the sport we all loved to play together. That part was amazing. What wasn't fun was the losing. Because lose we did. Because there were only 3 teams in the 25 and older division, we had to play our first four games against the 18 and older girls. And those college girls ran circles around us. And in front of us. And behind us. And they just never stopped running.

We learned quickly that we weren't going to be able to compete with any of those teams, much less win a game. But we played hard anyway, wondering how in the world we got so old so fast. Because we couldn't physically keep up with those young girls. Maybe it's the 19.5 kids. Or maybe it was the lack of practice, coaching, and recent experience that held us back. It doesn't matter. We got smoked off the court.

Here we are after our first game. I knew most of these girls from high school, and two were friends of friends I met that first day. Suzanne and Linzi Jolley, Tara, Heather, Hailee Adamson, Sarah Something, Cassie Warburton, Becky Semmens, me, and Kristin Hoffman. I went with maiden names because that's how I'll always think of them.

You are probably saying to yourself, "That doesn't sound like any fun at all." But you'd be wrong. Because it was so fun. And mostly because of #1 and #111, Tara and Heather. I was #11 in high school, and Tara took over after me. Heather was #32, but we ran out of 3's or 2's or something when we were making the numbers, so we thought it would be fun to carry on our 11.


This was the first time in a LONG time that none of us are pregnant. We haven't all played together in many years, and never like this. It was SO DANG FUN playing ball with my sisters. And even though we were getting spanked, my grandparents came to every game. And my dad was our next biggest fan. Those are special memories, and my aging body is telling me that there won't be too many more years where #1, #11, and #111 will be able to get up and down the court.
All day Thursday and Friday we kept saying, "When we play against our own division, things will be different." And Saturday morning we got our shot. We played against one of the two other teams and the game was much more competitive. They didn't have any more skill than we did, and they didn't run us out of the gym. But we couldn't get our shots to fall. It just wasn't our day.


We were happy with our bronze medal. We earned it. And we learned that with a little more practice, we could probably turn our bronze into silver. Or even gold. But we better make it quick. And we better bring along a massage therapist...