VFW

Dear Force Parents,

Well, our boys played really well this weekend. The end result was the 2008 Tigers Tournament 5th grade Gold Championship.

In the past two weeks we had practiced very hard and prepared for all three teams that we played this weekend. In the first game against the San Fernando Dragons we worked on defending the pick-n-roll between Travis and Dillon. We worked on fighting through the screens, switching and help defense. We also showed how our new high low offense worked. The end result was holding Dillon to 4 points and Travis to 8 points securing a 36-15 first round victory on Saturday. 

The second game against the much improved Mustangs team which finished as the CYC league champs was centered around playing team defense against their Christian Lee. We again worked on our help defense and not allowing anything in the key. We held him to 11 points and came out with a 32-23 win and a date on Monday in the Championship Game against the Ikaika Warriors. 

During our pregame walk through we talked about how hard we have been practicing since last years Jetts tournament to attack a zone defense. We learned our lessons in Sacramento and created an offense to work against the Warrior "X" zone. We worked hard in coming up with new plays like "Ono", our inbound play "Indiana" and our zone buster play "White" today moving Shaq out to the wing and allowing Trevor, Reed and Jordan to fill the high post and swing it to the other wing or corner. It allowed everyone to be a shooter so they couldn't double anyone. We had some great shots by Ty, Troy and Shaq  as well. It was a true team effort trying to wear them down, run on them and attack them when possible. We also talked about not letting them get easy shots and to use our fouls so they had to shoot free throws. It too worked as the Warriors ended up shooting 4 for 17 from the free throw line. We were a little better going 5 for 11. Overall, we wanted to play relaxed, stay focused and don't panic or stress out listening to their coaches.

Congratulations to the "FORCE" on one of their biggest wins.

Final Score: VFW Force 49, Ikaika Warriors 29

We cannot be more proud of our players this weekend, we should all be happy on how they played and conducted themselves on and off the court.

We will have Jason Wright this Friday 5/30, I will confirm the 9:00 p.m. time with him.

No practice this weekend but we will be practicing free throws. Our tournament number was 14 for 39 or 36%. Have your son practice free throws this weekend.

Let me know if you have any questions and we will have a practice schedule for next week out soon. If we get into the Hollywood Dodgers we will start practicing in the morning as we will be playing early like last year.

Thanks again to the Yanagi's, Tanioka's and Garcia's for the snacks this weekend.

Have a great week,

Mark