VFW

Dear Force Parents,

We are approaching the Tigers Tournament in less than three weeks. We were a little off in our last WLA Tournament so we are going to try and get everyone back up to speed without compromising other activities.

We will have our optional Jason Wright clinic this Friday 5/2 at 9:00 p.m. in Huntington Beach, Jason will continue to work on the boys shooting skills, this is important as they have now moved into the mens ball and we need to correct their form if they changed their shot from the womens ball. The new basketball is now a little bigger and heavier than before.

Our Tigers practice for this weekend will be on Sunday 5/4 at Mariners from 6:30-8:00 p.m., we had to schedule it a little later due to Mariners having an event earlier in the afternoon and for any conflicts of schedules that the FOR Tournament might bring.

We will be practicing next Friday 5/9 at the Buena Park Boys & Girls Club from 7:00-9:00 p.m. and will not be having a Jason Clinic this night. We have scheduled this mandatory practice as we will not be practicing on Mothers Day, Sunday 5/11. We are also looking for another possible location during the week as we need more time to work on all our situations. We will keep you posted.

On another note, the FORCE family would like to say "THANK YOU" to Coach Scotty and Tracie for their generous gift of $500.00 to our boys FORCE fund. This is the second time that they have donated to our boys. Last year their donation purchased our teams shooting shirts and also helped in our fees to this years 2008 Las Vegas Dodger Tournament. Thank you again Scott & Tracie for always being there for our boys !!!

We also are going to be very active this year in trying to build our fund up for our 2009 tournament season. We will be doing different activities that will add dollars to our fund. The first is the JW Clinic on 5/10 that we will be coordinating, it should add a few dollars to our fund depending on the number of players attending. We can also ask Caroline if she would coordinate with the boys her idea of recycling plastic and cans? The biggest effort will come from selling ads to our VFW Tournament in October, remember we receive 50% on all ads over $700, last year we received close to $400 back from VFW for our fund. Let me know if you have any other ideas that our boys could do to help in their tournament fund for next year.

Let us know if you cannot make practice this Sunday at Mariners.

Thanks,

Mark

Dear Force Parents,

We still have our optional Jason Wright clinic tomorrow night at his warehouse from 9:00-10:00 p.m., We spoke to Jason today and we will probably work on shooting and passing. Reed and Jordan will be there for sure.

Practice for this weekend in preparation for Tigers Tournament will be on Sunday 4/27/08 at Mariners Christian from 4:00-6:00 p.m.

There is a possibility that we have additional time at Oceanview HS on Sunday as well but we might only work on a certain skill as we only have a half court and we wouldn't be able to run everything in 90 minutes. We will discuss this and get back to everyone by tomorrow night.

Please let Jon or I know if you cannot make the Sunday practice, thanks again.

Mark

Dear Force Parents,

We would like to congratulate our boys for a great weekend winning the championship of the West Los Angeles Tournament in the 5th grade gold division.

It was our first full tournament switching to the mens ball and having our players play in different positions.

We opened on Saturday with a win over the FOR Vipers 33-15, then on to the mall to hang out, have lunch and relax for our second game against the San Fernando Dragons. It was one year ago that the Dragons beat us in this same tournament for the championship trophy so we had prepared our boys for their pick-n-roll that beat us last year. The result was a hard fought game that ended in a win 33-27, the bad news was that Travis ended up having a buckle fracture to his right wrist and will be put in a cast this week, all of us are wishing Travis a speedy recovery. In the championship game we faced the FOR Victory who have been playing up in 6th grade division in their CBO league. It was a very defensive game with the halftime score Force 8, Victory 5 !!!! We were having match up problems trying to play defense against them in different situations but our boys were successful in coming out with a 24-18 win and the championship for this years 20th WLA Tournament.

We have plenty of work cut out for us before the Tigers Tournament at the end of May. We struggled from the free throw line going 3/8, 1/8 and 10/28 for a total of 14/44 and a 32% percentage for the tournament. We will be working on this quite a bit this next month. Another area we need to improve on is our turnovers as we had 19, 20 and 19 in our three games, we will be concentrating on our rebound, outlet and middle drills for quite some time over the next month.

We will be having practice this weekend but do not have a schedule as of today. We will be updating this web hopefully by Thursday if we receive practice time.

Thank you to all the parents who brought snacks and drinks for this weekends game.

Please let us know if you cannot practice this weekend after we post the schedule.

Thanks again, and good job boys on another great tournament.

Mark

Dear Force Parents,

Just a reminder that we will have our first game tomorrow 4/19 at 12:00 noon at Paul Revere Middle School against the FOR Vipers. Thanks Tracie for giving out directions at our practice on Wednesday to the gym as well as to the Westside Pavillion where we will be hanging out between games.

Please have the boys wear their RED uniforms but bring their WHITE one as well. Also, be sure that they have an extra pair of shoes not slippers to wear between games.

Please be at the gym at 11:15 a.m. so we can stretch and go over our gameplan for the game. If we win our game will be at 6:00 p.m. if we lose it will be at 5:00 p.m.

Good luck to Trevor who will be playing in Houston Texas this weekend, we'll miss him.

Let me know if you have any questions,

Thanks,

Mark

Dear Force Parents,

Thanks to Coach Scotty and Coach Jon for helping out this weekend as we were in San Francisco wity both Yonsei teams entered in the Taisho Tournament. Ryan's Senior team (Y11) ended up 1-2 and Kelli's team (Y14) lost in the Championship game but were playing up in the 10th grade division. It was Ryan's last tournament with his team so it was a special time with all 12 seniors playing together for the last time.

Because we need to change our gameplan from the SASF Tournament of zone offense to man to man offense as well as making some other changes we will have a mandatory practice for  this weekends WLA Tournament. The practice will be Wednesday 4/16/08 at the American Sports Center from 5:30-7:00 p.m., we apologize for the early time and location but it was the only location we could find for this week. For those coming from the South Bay we know it's difficult at this time so please arrive as soon as possible.

The schedule for the WLA Tournament is out and we are scheduled for our first game at 12:00 noon at Paul Revere Middle School in Los Angeles. We played there last year as well. The WLA website is http://www.wlayc.org/schedules.htm

We will update the web before the end of the week to give you the latest changes for the upcoming tournament.

Let me know if you cannot make practice this Wednesday.

Thanks,

Mark