VFW

Dear Force Parents,

We have just completed our second year together today. Most of you started much earlier but Reed and I were welcomed to the "Force" family exactly two years ago in 2006. Our boys played very well today pushing the ball when we had an opportunity and running our half court offense when we couldn't run. The best part of our game was that we only had 8 turnovers for the whole game. The final result was a 44-31 victory over OCO-1 which completed our SEYO Season with a 9-1 record which placed us in a tie with OCO-1.

We have now completed a super record of 56-9 for the past two years together. 

This Friday will be the last Jason workout at 9:00 p.m. at the $20 rate. We are working with a new rate that will start in the month of March that will be more cost effective for all of us (more details to follow).

We will be taking a break this weekend so there will be no practice for either Saturday or Sunday. We will be posting the March practice schedule later this week as soon as we find out the gym availability for certain days. Our goal is to practice twice a week for the first two weeks and possibly three times for the third and fourth week before heading to Sacramento.

We also will be moving to the men's regulation ball starting at the next practice.

Have a great week,

Mark

Dear Force Parents,

We have been talking with the coordinators of the SASF Tournament this week. After looking at the brackets we have elected to take the first game on Saturday morning at 9:00 a.m. vs. the S.F. Associates 6th grade team, if we win that game we will play at 1:40 p.m. against the # 1 seed. We were given the # 3 seed for this gold division, there are 3 fifth grade teams in this division and 5 sixth grade teams.

Our games are tentatively scheduled to be at Harriet Eddy Middle School in Elk Grove. The address is 9329 Soaring Oaks Drive, Elk Grove, CA 95758

The school website is http://www.egusd.k12.ca.us/eddy/

The gym is 18.87 miles and 22 minutes according to mapquest from our Hotel.

Some of the best teams in Northern California are in this bracket, the SJUMC Heat (Sacramento Japanese United Methodist Church) is suppose to be one of the best 5th grade teams up north, SJUMC Sac Green team has a 6th grader that is 5'8" and weighs 220 lbs., we believe the 6th grade team that beat us in S.F. is also here called BAAS Sports Dragons. Luckily all three of these teams are in the bottom half of the whole bracket.

When the schedule is finalized we will attach it to this web site. When planning your trip to Sacramento please keep in mind the 9:00 a.m. game on Saturday morning.

We also need to send in our roster for the Hollywood Dodgers this week, we will assume everyone is going if they do not respond to Jon by Friday. If you are not going please let us know so we can add players to our roster if needed before submitting it.

We will be sending more information as we receive it, thanks again.

Mark

Dear Force Parents,

Here is the updated practice schedule for this weekend with one minor change.

9:00 p.m. Friday night optional workout with Jason at his warehouse in HB

4:00-5:30 p.m. Saturday Mandatory Practice at Marina HS

6:00-7:00 p.m. Saturday optional ball handling with Jason at Marina HS (no cost) 

We also need you to e-mail or call Jon by this Friday to let him know if you are going to Las Vegas on August 16-17 for the Hollywood Dodgers Tournament. Before we submit the roster and application we need to be sure everyone is going so we don't run into the same situation as last year when Austin was added after our application was submitted and he was not able to play last year. We are already two weeks behind in sending in our application.

Thanks,

Mark 

Dear Force Parents,

Here we are going into the final week of the season, we will be playing OCO this week. It is important that everyone makes it to practice on Saturday. Our practice schedule is 4:00-5:30 p.m. at Marina HS.

We also have the optional Jason clinic on Friday night at 9:00 p.m. in Huntington Beach.

Our boys played a solid game on Sunday as we worked the entire game on our zone offense. This offense is very hard to do as it is all timing since the defense doesn't really move. We actually had a few nice plays with it and will continue to work on it as OCO will probably zone defense us and most of the Northern teams will zone defense us as well.

We received some good information regarding our tournament next month and will be updating this site later tonight after we confirm it with the tournament director.

Let us know if you are not going to be at practice,

Thanks,

Mark

Dear Force Parents,

We wanted to explain a few more things to everyone who has been watching our SEYO games. If you have noticed the other two competitive teams only carry 6 or 7 players while we have 10 on our team. In SEYO each player must play 5 continuous minutes so the smaller the roster the better. Our goal is to play in tournaments where we will be playing two games in one day and a third game the following day. This is where a larger roster is needed as players get tired quicker and the play of tournaments is much more intense.

We are working on so many things with different players to cover all the fundamentals properly, there is just not enough practice time each week. Those players that are attending the Jason clinic on Friday night are getting professional instruction on defense which is great. We are going to try to add individual instruction on the small things that will help our team get better overall. These things are setting screens properly, using proper footwork in the post, taking charges, pick and roll, inside shooting, rebounding, etc.

Hopefully after the SEYO season ends we will have time to both prepare for tournaments as well as improve on our individual skills together. We will look at maybe doing a different schedule for the month of March to accommodate all our families schedules. Due to baseball schedules we are looking at having our optional Jason clinic on Friday evening, a possible optional practice on Saturday if we are provided free VFW gym time and then one mandatory practice on Sunday late afternoon for maybe up to three hours. This is just an option so please let us know if you cannot make Sunday's in the mid to late afternoons starting in March 2008 for four weeks before our SASF Tournament.

Thanks again,

Mark