First of all, I have to apologize for my terrible camera skills. I have never figured out how to take good pictures of fast moving targets. It doesn't matter if it's with my phone or my nice digital camera on it's fastest settings. One or all of the people turn into a big blur. It is incredibly frustrating.
January and February are basketball season. Josh played for the second year with a team he and his friends put together in our city's rec league. Kyle isn't old enough to put his own team together. He has to play with whatever boys he's gets assigned to.
Joshua's teammates are all on the cross country team. 2-3 of them are great ball players and the rest are trying their best. The advantage his team has over everyone else, is their stamina. They always start the first half of the game behind and struggle with the other team's height and girth. During the second half, they run those teams into the ground. One game the team would lay on the floor during every time out.
In all Josh's pictures, he's number 5. Sometimes he has a blue jersey, sometimes its white. I tried to get a good variety of images.
His dribbling has improved vastly this year. His team trusted him with moving the ball down court a lot more.
Here his is playing defense. Joshua has always played all sports like full tackle football. He is pushy, persistant, annoying, and isn't afraid to get a little dirty. (It's exactly how he acts at home when his parents tell him what to do.)
His shooting skills have also improved. He spends a lot of his free time messing around on our neighbor's driveway with their basketball standard. Our neighbors are the BEST!
I was finally able to capture some video of Josh playing like the pitbull he is. He wears his opponents out and gets in their minds. Luckily, he knows when to pull back and hasn't fouled out all year. He has gotten mighty close, however.
Kyle's season had huge positives and negatives. He started off impressing us with his improved agility. He has always been so tall and thin and that isn't easy to control with basketball. We compare him to a juvenile Labrador. When their paws are to big for their body and they have a hard time coordinating.
This year, Kyle's body has gained more muscle and his strength and power has improved. He has a great game IQ and is always in the right place at the right time.
Kyle turned into his team's defensive all-star. Kyle wasn't afraid to get in opponents faces and irritate them. He also came close to fouling out during a few games. I will show you later how he and his brother are very similar in their intensity.
The negatives this year for Kyle were that his team was pretty awful. They were quite inexperienced and didn't have a good coach. Also, Kyle broke his pinky finger and sprained his ring finger playing basketball while hanging out with friends. He had to miss 2-3 games. The silver lining was that when Kyle was able to join them for the last game of the regular season, they won their only game.
In Kyle's pictures, he is number 11.
Here he is running down the court trying to beat a guy to the basket.
Kyle's dribbling improved over 100%. He even added dribbling back and forth between both hands while being defended. (Thanks goes out to Grandpa Clark for the ambidextrous gene!)
Here Kyle is braving out a tall defender and going for the hook shot. (I think that's what its called.) He did get fouled and made one of his free throws.
Even one point feels good!
Here are my favorite images. This is where I'll show you how much intensity these boys can have. The images are crappy but look at both of their faces. They look like they are crazed vikings headed out to battle. Josh's friend's Mom caught the end of Kyle's game and said, "He keeps making the same face that Josh does."
