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.