How Will Your Child Respond?

Trinity is a member of the Austin Inter Parochial League (AIPL) a group of 18 independent middle schools from all over the Austin area. It is superbly well organized, offering hundreds of students opportunities to compete in a variety of sports throughout the school year. Our basketball teams just finished competing in 10 different season-ending AIPL tournaments, a sort of February Madness......which spilled into March because of a "snow" day.

I am very pleased with the improvement demonstrated by our young basketball players this season particularly in two important areas:

1. Learning what it truly means to play within the team concept.

2. Learning the fundamentals crucial to playing within the team concept.....man defense, moving without the ball, spacing, looking, and passing.

We have stressed these areas of development in our PE Sports units as well. They are skill sets that set the stage for future athletic development and yet they are some of the most ignored fundamentals in our how-do-I-get-my-child-ahead youth sports culture. Too many of our young athletes have spent a disproportionate amount of time focussing on individual skills like dribbling and shooting. When they reach a level.....usually HS JV, HS Varsity, or (for a select few) college.....where everyone around them is as good or better, they do cannot function within the team concept.

Personally, there is nothing more gratifying than watching our athletes execute together. The parents at Trinity generate lots of positive energy at games, spurring our athletes on to dive for loose balls, lockdown on defense, and share the ball on offense.......characteristics of a true competitor. Our kids are being taught seminal life lessons and everyone is part of the process!