And here she is: The next Michael Jordan

Sophia had her first basketball game(s) on Saturday. She actually had two games back to back. They won both. Sophia scored in both games!  I was so impressed with her abilities.  She's good and with some dribbling practice and after she has an understanding of the game and knows exactly what she's supposed to do on the court, she's going to be really good!

There are three teams in the league and they just play each other over and over for a 5 or 6 weeks. After seeing all the teams play, I was thinking the deck is stacked in our favor, but Will told me that all of our "bad" players weren't there.  It seems like they play every girl for 4 minutes at a time, then ring a super loud buzzer and switch players for another 4 minutes. There are an agonizing EIGHT 4-minute periods in each game.

At half-time each team lines up on their end of the court and each girl takes a turn trying to make a foul shot. Coach Johanna told the girls to only use one hand when throwing a foul shot.... so Sophia (my little rule follower) only uses one hand. She was 1 for 2 on Saturday.  Most of the other girls on her team not only have to use both hands, but they have to throw their entire body weight into just getting the ball close to the net.

When the scoreboard hits 25 points scored for either team, the board is automatically reset back to 0-0 score. Proudly, I have to say that Sophia's team scored more than 25 points in each of their games. Neither of the other teams can come close to saying that.  Sophia even scored for the other team in the second game...(just to help them out, I'm sure!).

Just a note: all the pictures I took ended up being blurry. Hmmm....I wonder if I can convince Will that we need a camera that will take great motion shots?

Here's she is.....our future high school superstar:

Sophia Amber Alexander #23

Here's a "line-up" of her team, Liberty.  

The second girl in line (on the right) is a really good, aggressive player. From looking at this photo it appears that Sophia is the tallest girl on the team although I didn't notice on Saturday. The other two super tall girls are pretty good...neither are afraid to steal the ball away from the other team and the girl behind Sophia can really run fast while dribbling the ball, but neither of them is as accurate as Sophia at shooting baskets.  This league is for 6-8 yr old girls so we're on the older end of the spectrum.  Riley, Sophia and Lilly's best friend, is also on the team. She's the girl Sophia is talking to. She'll turn 7 in February, but she's tiny for her age.