From the Mind of Lemm: THE BASKETBALL DIARY

by Riley Lemm For Leader
| July 28, 2011 7:45 AM

All of my life, at least the life I can remember, I have wanted

to compete in Hoopfest. This year I was able to be a captain and

play in it. I played with several of my soccer friends, James

Larson, Peregrine Frissell and Jon Murphy. All of us have varying

degrees of basketball skill, but each of us have only played one or

two years, so we weren't exactly the Boston Celtics out there, but

we played competitively.

All of my life, at least the life I can remember, I have wanted to compete in Hoopfest. This year I was able to be a captain and play in it. I played with several of my soccer friends, James Larson, Peregrine Frissell and Jon Murphy. All of us have varying degrees of basketball skill, but each of us have only played one or two years, so we weren't exactly the Boston Celtics out there, but we played competitively.

We won our first game, to the surprise of many, especially ourselves. When we arrived at the court before our first game we were intimidated by the 6'4" extension of the Mission Mountains on the other team, since nobody on our team was over 6'1". We were able to neutralize him, and our team outplayed them at the other positions, which lead to our one-point victory. This was our goal, to play and win at least one game, which we did against a team of varsity basketball players.

I was happy, think "Mark Madsen after the Lakers win the Finals" happy, at least until I saw we had to play against some Polson basketball players next. This was a big game for me because this was against kids who I play with all the time, so I knew their strengths and weaknesses. We ended up losing by two in a competitive game that came down to an "And 1," on a questionable call. [I think Tim Donaghy was reffing the game] We were still in it though because the tournament was double elimination.

Our final game was also against Polson players, and we lost again, this time by three. We played hard but missed a lot of open shots. It was a rough way to go out of the fest but we gave our all and didn't leave any regrets on the court.

Hoopfest was what I expected it would be: hard, competitive, foul-filled basketball. Even though our team wasn't very experienced, we hung with the teams we lost to, only losing in the final minutes or seconds. I had a blast playing, and I'm sure the other players did as well. Now that I have started playing in this tournament, I'm positive you will see me on a Hoopfest team next year.