Homeschool Basketball

The kids played Basketball again this year. The public school had a few kids that wanted to play this year so the homeschooled kids (my oldest five and Josh Armstrong) practiced with them. Our homeschooled kids joined up with two homeschooled boys, William and Lee Clark, from the next village and played many games against teams from villages around Lake Iliamna. Lake Iliamna is a 20 mile drive across our frozen lake, up a trail and down a very icy road. Most of our games were played at the Newhalen school which is the closest village on Lake Iliamna to us. They host many tournaments every year and they invited us down for some of those and for several scrimmages as well. Twice the older kids drove with Paul to Iliamna and then got in the Clark's airplane and flew to other villages around the Lake to play their highschool three man teams. There are still a couple of schools they hope to play after spring break. They've had a great time especially since Paul is their traveling coach. Before Paul's elbow was healed enough to travel, they played in a Jr. High Tournament and Abigail was the coach. The Jr. High tournament has become an annual event for us. Levi and Micah Natewick fly down from Port Alsworth to play in it with us. Because Paul had an infected elbow Joel and Lisa Natewick flew down and picked our kids up on the way and chaperoned them for the tournament. They've had a tremendous season with lots of great memories of traveling in sleeping bags in a pickup in single digit weather.

Crossing the frozen lake in our pickup.

(Sorry about the quality of all the pictures, I snipped them from our video camera.)

Going up the hill on the other side of the lake.

Paul giving instruction during a time out.

Abigail working to get open.

Abigail scoring?

Deborah bringing the ball down the court...

...and driving for the basket.

Quentin has put on some muscle this year. All that sawing and splitting wood has paid off.

Here he is soaring to the basket.

Quentin driving the length of the court.

Quentin with the rebound.

Anna shooting the jumper as Quentin watches.

Anna is an awesome defensive player.

Joshua got to play in the Jr. High games even though he's a fourth grader. It evened things out since Deborah (9th grade) had to play to make enough players when we played five man teams.

Joshua is actually a great little player, he made this one.

A couple of times the mighty mites and pee wees in Newhalen were playing while we were there. They invited Caleb and Joshua to play with them.

Below Caleb has the ball. Joshua is on the far right.

Josh Armstrong going up strong for a shot.

Lee Clark is our best ball handler.

William Clark starting off the game with the jump ball.

Below Lee lost the handle on the ball and stopped to retrieve it which caused Abigail to trip over his leg and the kick the ball away from him. It looks really cool in slow motion...