Author: JJ Petes

A week after losing four straight games against teams loaded with fifth and sixth graders, Quin makes his first start in the annual YMCA junior basketball league Saturday. This league is limited to third and fourth graders.

Scouts tell me Quin’s team should win today, but I haven’t the foggiest idea what to expect. What I do know is Quin’s GBD team is atop the standings with a 1-0 record. Two other teams share the same record and GBD’s opponent today is the 1-1 AK Eagles.

The full list of remaining team names in the league are: Frozen Frontier, Next Level, T’Wolves, Young Bulls, All-Net, AK Elite, Next Up and AK Prime.

click here to view the standings

Quin is about to start his second journey through the YMCA youth basketball comp league, which will run through March. As a warm-up, his GBD team full of third and fourth graders is taking on fifth and sixth graders in a Wasilla tournament.

They lost three games Saturday, but sources say Quin is not deterred. He relishes the challenges and looks forward to trying to improve his game against tougher opponents.

He gets to play at least one more game Sunday and then the comp league in his own age group will start next weekend.

It took all weekend, three days of basketball and three games on Sunday, when Quin’s Get Better Daily basketball team won a tournament in Palmer. Quin, 10, may have played his best basketball in the championship game, which came right down to the final seconds before being decided.

Quin made a high percentage of shots, including multiple 3-pointers. He defended well, shared the ball well, handled the ball well and rebounded the ball well. All was well, for sure, even the worthy competition.

The team GBD beat 24-20 was from Fairbanks and one of the best youth teams I’ve seen. A fiercely competitive bunch who played smart and made a few 3-pointers of their own, they never let up, even when Quin’s GBD squad was building toward a double-digit lead. Such a commanding lead was never reached and GBD led by just two with seconds remaining when Aso, a teammate of Quin’s stole the ball and took it in for a game-sealing bucket.

There were many similar exciting moments throughout the weekend. Much credit is due to all the kids who participated and produced a thrilling competition.

November of 2025 has arrived and with it a sports schedule for Quin that causes old people like me to feel phantom pains. It seems he is either skating or dribbling all waking moments of each and every day. I’m not sure how he ever goes to school, but I’ve heard tell he does go enough to win awards there and even attend parties with other kids.

His sports schedule is busy enough for Quin to have recorded a hat trick in a hockey victory and drained several 3-pointers on the basketball courts. Currently competing in a Palmer basketball tournament all weekend, Quin’s GBD squad is undefeated through two games at the time of writing this post.

The purpose of this post is not to provide scores and highlights, however, but just to get some kind of update on the board to document that the winter of 2025 is full of good stuff from Quin.

I receive high quality video highlights from Laura the videographer. I’m saving them for a later post, maybe around the first of the year. Quin continues to astonish with his vast improvements in basketball. The 10-year-old can dribble with both hands like a circus juggler, tickle the twine with feathery touch and play defense like a badger guarding its den.

His tireless work ethic is to thank, no doubt, as well as strong guidance from GBD coaches that have shown him some new tricks. Having attended most of his basketball games in person, I can vouch for everything I’m writing.

I haven’t been to a hockey game yet, but I hear Quin’s shot is deadlier than ever and that he stealthily skates to strategic zones in hunt for new scoring opportunities. He even puzzles coaches by shooting and scoring right where they told him not to.

The Holidays are lined up to provide plenty of sporting fun for all as Quin’s 11th year speeds along.

Quin’s first comp basketball season ended with some quintessential highlights from the third-grader’s repertoire. Quin has always loved and excelled at shooting bombs on the basketball court and he finally got a chance to do so after a long season of patience and development.

Quin nailed multiple three-pointers over his last two games, helping his South Anchorage Raptors advance to a middle-of-the pack finish in the season-ending tournament.

His next three-pointer after the one pictured above also went in off the glass, to prove there was no fluke luck involved. Quin’s bombs were so much fun for everyone to watch, there were reports that all the kids in practice starting hoisting it from the cheap seats to try their hand.

Shooting is always the most fun part of playing basketball, but Quin made great strides as a defender and rebounder throughout the season and learned how to run some actual plays for the first time. He showed great promise as a passer and facilitator as well.

A big lesson learned about the comp league is that about half the teams are well organized programs with kids who play together nearly year-round. The Raptors fall in with the other half of the teams, which consist of friends and their parents throwing together a squad to see what they can do on limited practice time and no prior competitive experience. The Raptors went the furthest in the tournament of any of those type of teams, so one must consider the season a success.

So far, Quin’s offseason training program has included one-handed, half-court shooting practice on the school playground and record-setting performances on his pop-a-shot machine at home. No doubt, we are in store for some future fireworks as he enters fourth grade next fall.

Quin’s first comp-league playoff game was a doozy last week. The Raptors were significant underdogs against Elite Orange, but made the opponent visibly nervous in the first few minutes by playing shut-down defense. Though the game ended with a 30-1 final score, it was clearly the Raptors’ best game of the season.

The tournament is of the double-elimination variety, which means the Raptors will get another game Tuesday against the Tarheels, a team they beat handily during the regular season.

Quin’s comp-league basketball team finished the regular season in seventh place out of nine teams. There will be a postseason tournament in a week or so. The double-elimination event will include all nine teams and early prognostications indicate Quin’s team will have a shot to play three or four games if the Raptors can muster some strong play.
It will be exciting to see what they can do.

This week was a tough one for the South Anchorage Raptors basketball team, which lost both games of a Saturday doubleheader. The first game was close and dramatic, ending at 15-12. The second game was a lopsided 32-2. On the bright side, Quin made great strides as a defender and rebounder this week.

Rumors spread from Quin’s mom to me that he wowed the fans (parents) at practice with impressive blocked shots. Constantly making his teammates look foolish in scrimmages by rejecting their scoring efforts. Word on the street is, one of his coaches was suddenly pleased to learn Quin can really jump.

This carried into both games Saturday, as Quin made one opponent forget to shoot after leaving the floor, which resulted in a traveling call and a turnover back to Quin’s team. While blocks were hard to come by, Quin altered many shots throughout both games, causing misses and leading to Raptor rebounds.

This is another area of great improvement for Quin, crashing the boards, that is. With points difficult to come by, Quin has been forced to abandon shooting to work on new fundamental skills. His defense, rebounding and passing skills are making great strides and he is a more complete player than ever before. He is also handling the tough losses without shedding a single tear, at least that I could see.

With one game left in the regular season, the Raptors are destined to be in the lower half of the standings in the nine-team league. They are guaranteed a spot in the end-of-season tournament, so there is a chance to pull off an underdog run for a championship.

Free throws may be the most underrated part of basketball, but not to Quin. He loves shooting free throws in practice and Saturday he swished a real one in a comp-league game.

Quin’s team went on to lose the game, but bounced back to win against another team on a rare double-header day of hoops. He wrapped up his busy, athletic day with a hockey game.

Quin made some nice, aggressive drives to draw fouls on a few occasions. Counting last weekend, he has made a handful of trips to the free-throw line before cashing in.

The loss came against the Twolves, who are one of the league’s top teams in the standings. The win in the second game was against the last-place team in the standings, known as the Young Boys.

Quin did manage to score multiple times in the win, with one such example below:

Having barely arrived in time to his second comp-league basketball game, Quin helped his South Anchorage Raptors roll to a 22-5 win over the Tarheels (1-4) on Saturday. It was the first win in three tries for the Raptors, who showed marked improvement in all phases of the game. The third and fourth graders defended very well, rabidly secured rebounds and even tickled the twine on a few shots.

Brantley Smith knocked down two 3-pointers, which were part of a superb shooting performance for him. Quin scored a couple of buckets. Forgive me if I’m mistaken, as official stats and rosters aren’t available, but I believe Logan Parret and Ezra Dinger also scored for the Raptors.

The Tarheels didn’t utilize a pressing defense the way the AK Elite Orange did last week, which helped the Raptors set up their offense. Having worked hard at practice all week on passing and cutting, it paid off on this play.

The six-week season continues Saturday with a double header. The first game is against TWolves Elite and the second is against the Young Boys. The TWolves are one of the top teams in the league and the Young Boys are off to a slow start.

Quin is expected to play in both games, unless his hockey heroics cause delay, as they almost did Saturday. The multi-sport athlete sandwiched his basketball game between two hockey games, both of which were victories. Here is a shootout goal Quin scored in the second game to contribute to an overtime win: