Blue team basketball players always have their shoes untied. At least that was the first thing I noticed when I watched one of their practices for the first time, because their coach kept yelling, "tie your shoes!" which rang out across the gym and echoed off the cold stone walls and shiny polished wood floor. The second thing I noticed was that they're very short for basketball players. Well, three girls were sort of tall, (Kirwan, Bella, and Christina), but everyone else was very short. The girls also all had their hair up in the same way, in sloppy ponytails nearly slipping out of hair elastics, probably so it wouldn't get in their face or distract them. The girls fiddled with their hair throughout practice none the less. The Blue team consists of eleven seventh graders and one eighth grader. All the other eighth graders dropped out after finding out that they were on the Blue team, the worst of the two middle school girls basketball teams.

One of the days I was at practice I was talking to Simmy, the eighth grader on the Blue team. Similarly to the other girls on the blue team, Simmy didn't look like she played basketball. She always wore long baggy shorts and an oversized shirt to practice. Because she was Siek, an Indian religion where you do not cut your hair, she wore her hair in a long braid that went all the way down her back, not a ponytail like the other girls. I asked Simmy if she minded being the only eighth grader and she told me, "I knew I wasn't going to be on the Red team, so I never even thought about it. I'd rather be decent on the Blue team then really bad on the red team." Simmy shared the mentality of the other girls on the team. They don't seem to care that they are on the Blue team. I thought that they would; that being on a better team would have some sort of social status to it in middle school, but that apparently not. When I was on a Blue team in middle school, you were seen as worse at all sports because you weren't playing at the top level. I know people thought I wasn't good at sports because I was on the Blue team for two different sports. Maybe their mentality was that if the sport was not their favorite thing, they didn't feel a need to be the best at it. I asked many of the girls what their favorite sport was, and none of them said basketball. Most of the girls said volley ball, soccer, or field hockey; sports you can't play at school in the winter.

I asked Bryn, a seventh grader, how many wins she thought they'd get this season. Bryn was one of the girls on the team who looked like she actually wanted to get stuff out of practice. She was spunky and never got down on herself, or at least she didn't show it. Her hair matched her personality perfectly; it bounced with every move she made. Bryn, unlike some of the other girls, would actually put effort into the drills and she would listen to what the coach said. I was told by a few people on the team that Bryn was one of the best players. When I asked Bryn how many games she thought they'd win, she told me, "hopefully four…but probably two." Bryn was one of the few people who told me she wasn't friends with everyone on the team. Most people told me that they were friends with everyone, but when I asked Bryn, she said, "I know everyone, but I'm definitely not friends with everyone."

I know it's hard not having friends play the same sports that you play in middle school. When I was on the Blue team I had no friends with me either. The epitome of a middle school girl is to be well liked and popular, often causing those who aren't to stand out in a team sport like basketball. Simply put, if you aren't friends with the person who has the ball, then she might not pass it to you just because she doesn't like you.

Besides the conversation I had with Bryn, I noticed a few times some of the stereotypical, "middle school drama." I didn't get to talk to all of the girls, and one of the girls I didn't get to talk to but would have like to talk to, was Nicky. She dressed like she was modeling the latest sporting attire, not getting ready to play basketball. She was seventh grader and was noticeably popular, so I figured she was friends with everyone. Well, that wasn't the case because during the second practice I watched, the girls were asked to pair off and she had to go with someone she didn't like. She rolled her eyes, had so much attitude (to the point where I was waiting for her to put her hand up, a gesture almost like a high five, to the other girl, but instead meaning, "I don't want to talk about it") and nearly ignored the other girl she was paired with. Because this is a team of middle school girls, I also figured they would have some opinion about their jerseys. I wasn't there when the jerseys were handed out, but I was at the practice for their team picture, where they had to wear their jerseys. The jerseys didn't fit anybody well. They were either too tight, too loose, or too long. I could imagine how self-conscious that made the girls feel. When I was on the Blue team, I was not a stick figure like half of these girls. My jersey was ordered two sizes too big so it would "fit me" and not be too tight, but, because I was short, the jersey nearly covered my shorts it was so long. One of the girls, Alex, didn't have the right color shorts on, (bright pink to be exact) and was handed a blue pair by the photographer, who happened to be a male from the athletic staff, just to wear just for the picture. The entire three minutes she had them on, she was fiddling with them and trying to make them look somewhat flattering. I don't know if she succeeded or not, but they took the picture anyway. If any of the girls thought about it, they would have realized how awful the lighting in the Coyle Gym makes people look. Fluorescent lighting does nobody justice, even super popular middle school girls.

Sometimes I could tell that the girls didn't take practice seriously. They didn't pay attention at all when the coach was explaining directions, and one time I noticed that the girls who weren't part of the drill that they were doing, sat down and had their own conversations instead of paying attention to the directions when it came time for their turns. I know that when I was on the Blue team in middle school I wasn't allowed to sit down when I wasn't doing anything…but that probably has to do with the fact that I had an entirely different coach when I was on the blue team. If we sat down in practice, we had to run sprints later. Instead the girls told their coach that they "forgot" what she said, when they really weren't paying attention. They laughed a lot when they messed up. They're not allowed to sing in practice, and when they do, I was told they had to run the rest of practice. Some of them flinched when they catch the ball or in general, when it came within three feet of them.

Ok, so maybe they aren't going to be the next Miami Heat, but they did have some of the most entertaining practices I've ever seen. Practices where the girls said, "For Narnia!" before doing a bounce pass. Practices where the girls played dribble knockout, their favorite game as I now know. Practices where the girls, like Eva, a small blonde who I think might have actually tried to e oblivious to everything, took wild guesses about actual basketball stuff like saying, "zone defense is so you can get to the basket easier." I don't know that much about basketball, but I'm pretty sure defense involves guarding people, not scoring. According to the other girls, Eva was one of the worst on the team, but she provided comic relief.

I think part of the reason the girls seemed to enjoy practice was that they liked their coach. Jazzy graduated college not that long ago, so she's a lot younger than the other coaches or teachers that the girls have had before. Her coaching style was unreal. The way she explained things to the girls was so different from the way I've seen other coaches explain the same things, because she really tried to make it so they understood what she's trying to explain.

I think the best thing about having Jazzy as their coach was that despite the fact that she's intimidating (their words, not mine), she's somehow approachable. The intimidation factor probably came from the fact that she's built from training to be a firefighter. She's not tall in the basketball realm, just average there, but she was incredibly strong. She looked like she could use some of the smaller players as the basketball, and during demonstrations she had to be careful not to go to hard or she might knock someone over. I was at one practice where she was demonstrating how to do a lay-up and nearly flipped a girl over, entirely by accident. It was after that that I noticed how she took things down a level and go a little bit easier on her team…but not that much easier. Her years as a varsity athlete in high-school and college showed through when she demonstrated for her team. You could see her genuine passion for the sport.

At one of the practices I watched, Jazzy was explaining to the girls how to do chest passes, which according to her was, "like salsa dancing; you go forward and back." I have never seen salsa dancing, aside from Dancing with The Stars, but I can imagine it would be like a bounce pass for basketball, at least how you move your body. Apparently you lead with your arms and then the rest of your body follows…or something like that.

Jazzy liked to make the explanations fun, something that the girls will remember later on, during a game. She actually demonstrated while she explained, as opposed to doing just one or the other, (which lead to some interesting replications of the team trying to mimic what she was demonstrating). She actually participated in some of the drills that she had the girls do, which I think showed the team that she was more than just their coach.

Jazzy could also get the same level as the girls if needed, which I think is something unique to her style of coaching. She would take the time to explain to the girls individually what they were doing wrong. Even if it's in the middle of a drill, especially the lay-up drill that they did nearly every practice, she would pull girls aside and explain what they needed to do to improve. She could sense if one of her players was having a bad day or just needed somebody to talk to and she would tell everyone else to get water, and then pulled that person aside so she could talk to them. Her attention to each of her players, whether they like basketball or not, was unmatchable.

I asked Kirwan, a seventh grader, if she liked Jazzy. She told me, "Yeah. Jazzy's great!" That pretty much sums up what the rest of the team thought of Jazzy, too, because every person that I talked to on the team told me that they liked Jazzy. I have never heard of a team where everyone unanimously liked their coach so much.

Not to be pessimistic or anything, but I don't think these girls have futures in basketball. By the age of fourteen girls drop out of sports twice as much as boys because of the social stigma that comes with being a female athlete. Thirty five percent of girls say that they plan to stop sports within the next year or plan to stop sometime soon. Most of these girls probably won't even go on to play basketball in high school, given that none of them told me that basketball was their favorite sport.

I asked some of the girls if they could be any character or other person, who would they be? Most of them told me pop singers (like Taylor Swift), characters from teen fiction books (one girls said any girl from any Sara Dessen book), or Katniss from the Hunger Games (that was a pretty common one). I think the fact that none of them picked athletes as people who they would want to be fits with the fact that hardly any of them have futures in sports, and that they know that too. But they did pick females that are super powerful, women or girls that could stand on their own. That is one of the things that I think being on a team with Jazzy as a coach does for you. It shows you that you can be yourself and still succeed. You don't need to be good at everything, you just need to find something that you like, and do it regardless of what people think about you doing it.

The last day I was visiting their practice, Jazzy had to leave early. The girls looked at me and said, "You're going to coach us, right?" I just looked at them and laughed. Like they will probably do, I stopped playing basketball after middle school. While the girls may never play basketball again, they can take some things from their practices, like being able to laugh at mistakes, learning that coaching styles like Jazzy's are effective, or that being the best at something is not necessary to enjoy it. The girls might forget everything about basketball. But I hope they don't forget what's really important, and finally learn to keep their shoes tied.