VFW

We should all be proud of our boys for their total team effort in our victory against OCO yesterday. As we were leaving the gym we were approached by many who came to watch the game, Norwalk, OCBC, OCO, WPC parents and coaches and they all said the same thing. You played very well as a team !!! This is the highest compliment as we said from the beginning that our goal was to make this a "team" and we wanted the boys to be friends off the court so they could trust each other on the court. Yesterday's 38-21 score proved that it is working. I'm not sure as parents if you saw these little things like Sunny winning the tip, he played great defense, rebounded well and scored a basket and set the best screen for Trevor that I've seen all year. Brad shut down Brandon, made three great steals and ran our starting 5 team extremely well. Troy made some great swing passes to the weak side played great defense on the weak side helping plug the middle on help defense, he also made a great move scoring a basket that was called back for traveling but it looked great. Christian again is bringing his "A" game on defense back again, he ended up guarding 66 Patrick who was their center. He also did a great job in switching to guard Matthew when Patrick set the screen for him. Shaq made the best reverse pivot move this year leaving his defender stuck to the block, his defense and rebounding in the middle took the second unit to another level and started our run in period 6 to put the game out of reach. Kenny took on the task to guard Matthew the whole game, he had the hardest job but held him to 11 points which was their whole team. He also had some great passes from the corner that showed how well our offense can run. Sammy had his best game so far this year, he also took on Matthew, made a great block, scored on our inbound play, and had two other baskets being in the right place on our offense. Jordy also took on the task to shut down Brandon for the second unit, his defense was so good that we took Brandon totally out of the game, he also did a great job running the point for the second unit. Trevor and Reed were able to get to the basket because our offense was spread out, the cutters were cutting, we were swinging the ball effectively and it was giving our shooters open shots. They both played a great all around game. So as you can see it is a "team" that wins and not just a couple of good players OCO had a couple of good players in Brandon and Matthew but 10 beats 2 anytime. Remember we have no practice on Friday this week but we are scheduled at Marina from 2:00-3:30. We are trying to switch to a later time but we will let everyone know later this week. Great game, enjoy the week and we'll see everyone on Saturday. Mark

This is just a reminder that we have practice on Saturday 1/20/07 at Marina HS from 2:00-3:30 p.m., this is an important practice before our game with OCO on Sunday. Please let Jon or I know if you cannot be at practice tomorrow. Update on the Palm Springs Tournament, we currently have rooms on hold at the Marriott Shadow Ridge. These rooms are actually villas and are about the same price as the tournament Hotels. The rates for the one bedroom villas are $168 and $250 for the two bedroom Villas. We will discuss this in more detail after we are accepted into the tournament. We will be sending in our application to the Megalopolis tournament by the end of the month. We won't know if we are accepted until the end of the season. As the season comes to an end we will learn more about the who and where for this tournament. We believe our division will be in West Los Angeles. Our goal is to utilize our tournament fund for this years tournaments. It appears that we might have enough money to pay for the Hollywood Dodgers and San Pedro Knights Tournaments. We are also trying to see if VFW would sponsor our team for the Megalopolis Tournament. We won't be practicing on Friday for the next few weeks as Mariners is not available. We will be practicing on Friday's 2/9 and 2/16 as well as Saturday's practice to get us in shape for the tournament in March 2007. Hope to see everyone tomorrow, let Jon or I know if you cannot make practice. Thanks, Mark

Hi Force Parents, The boys played a very good game this past Sunday. Their defense is improving each week. In fact, they held Norwalk scoreless in the second half of the game. The new offense seemed to work at times and can only get better as we practice it more and more each week. We will not be having practice this Friday 1/19/07 as Mariners is unavailable. We will have practice on Saturday at Marina HS, Huntington Beach from 2:00-3:30 We are also requesting from Mariners the possibility of practicing every Friday through the end of the season. These practices are not necessarily for SEYO but to prepare us for the tournaments that are weeks after the end of the season. We need to start practicing our full court trap and full court press break. We also need to refine our half court trap and half court press break. As we get closer to the end of the season we will be challenging our players again to practice 1,000 free throws before the Dodgers Tournament in Las Vegas. Please let us know if you cannot make practice this Saturday. Thanks, Mark

Hi Force Parents, We are going to schedule a practice this Friday 1/12/07 at Mariners from 6:30-8:30 The reason for this practice is that we need to prepare for the Norwalk game on Sunday since they beat OCO last weekend. We will be using this practice to concentrate on the little things like boxing out, lay-ups, passing, free throws, footwork, etc. Our Saturday practice will be at Marina from 2:00-3:30 p.m. Please let Jon or I know if you are not going to be at either practice, thanks. Mark

Hi Force Parents, I forgot to add that we all need to pay Jon or Wendy $24 each for our extra practices in the month of December. We had four practices at Mariners at $60 per practice. We divided the total by our 10 families. Thanks, Mark