"Believe"



[Back]: Nick Suter, Cody Barry, Elijah Andrushenko, Brady Shearer, Dante Kelly, Tanner Tutterow, Kyler Brudwick, TJ Brown [Front]: Anthony Schulz, Lake Sullivan, Alex Martin, Dalton Neer

Trust on 3...

This weekend a team that a good friend of mine and I coach finally achieved the ultimate goal of all competitive sports teams. We won a tournament, and beat two very good teams in the process. We competed on the big stage in front of a rather large crowd and came out on top.

For three years we (nick and I) have been preaching to "believe" in the hard work they put in, day in and day out and to "trust" the system, each other and the coaches. This all came to fruition this weekend and it was a great satisfaction to be apart of bringing these kids the joy I took for granted as a player in my AAU days.

The first day we lost to a good team, but we didn't quit. We made it to the semi-final game by winning our pool and came up against a Lynden team that is very talented, one that we hadn't beat in two years. We won that game on pure team effort. A couple kids really stepped up and provided a spark off the bench, defensively and from beyond the arc.

In the championship we played quite possibly the best defensive performance I've seen as a coach, it was amazing to see this kids trust in the system and each other the way they did, they didn't reach and foul if they got beat off the dribble because they knew they had someone in the help-side position there if they needed. Our posts got every single rebound that came there way and our guards had very little turnovers.

All in all I think this is the kind of win that pushes a team to the next level, the smiles on their faces was worth every hour that I've put into this team and I bet they would say the same.

Moral of the Story:

“Victory is sweetest when you've known defeat.” - Malcolm S. Forbes