Scappoose High School Basketball

Odd post title, huh? Especially considering my oldest is only in first grade, I don't live in Scappoose, and I work at Intel.

Well, as many of you know, my first love was basketball. I fell in love with the game as a kid and played through high school and into college. My playing career (if you would call it that) ended after 2 years of Junior Varsity Basketball at Linfield College. Then I was lucky enough to be offered a position coaching for Larry Doty. I spent a year as an assistant on both the varsity and JV coaching staff. Then my senior year I took over coaching the junior varsity team.

I loved it.

Then reality set in. I was graduating and had student loans I needed to start paying off in 6 months. So I left McMinnville and started a series of jobs that have delivered me to where I am now - a 10 year veteran of Intel Corporation.

Part of the 'when I win the lottery plan' involves going back to coaching.

So why 'Scappoose High School Basketball' post? A very good friend of mine is the first year head coach of the Scappoose boys varsity basketball team. I mentioned to him years ago that when/if he got the gig I would help him out. Well, he got the gig and he called my bluff.

After some intense negotiations between the two of us, and then negotiations between Steph and I, we collectively agreed that I would volunteer as his assistant coach with his varsity squad.

It's been hard on everyone as I try to balance my evenings between time with family and time spent coaching and scouting. It's not been easy, but to this point, I love it... Steph maybe not so much!

Intel is supportive of people volunteering in local schools, but of course my day job is #1, so the basketball team is taking a back seat to my work schedule... So really it's a part time gig as assistant coach.

We have a good group of kids that play hard. We aren't big though. Our tallest guy, while strong as a bull, is only about 6'2" tall!

Our strategy is simple... and only successful if the kids buy in: play hard for 32 minutes, tough full court man to man defense, be in the best shape of any team in our conference and push the ball up the floor every trip.

We played our first game last night at Rainier High School. Rainier was at a disadvantage with a number of their varsity basketball players still playing football as well as their Division I 6'11" center having broken his leg. They played hard given the boys they had available, but even with us only having our football players out for a couple of practices we were able to jump on them early and ran out to a 20-6 first quarter lead on our way to a 67-24 win.

First game of the season so there are plenty of things to work on, but the overall effort was very good. Kids played hard, ran hard and gave good effort... which means they understand how we want to play and are bought in for now. Opponents get better, competition gets tougher starting Saturday when we play at Cascade High School... It should be a good one!