Season’s End

Yesterday was Carter’s final middle school basketball game.  It was a day met with sadness for Carter who declared earlier this year that basketball is her favorite sport.  I knew that was true when while Carter was sick for two weeks I caught her sleeping with her basketball in her bed.

Carter is tall, something she has always been.  Tall is good in basketball, but it is not everything or even half.  I am thankful that she has discovered this love of basketball even though it is late in the child sports world of today.  Learning the important ball handling and shot making skills ideally would have started when she was about four.  I blame Carter’s nice nature and my ignorance for this not happening.

Carter was first introduced to team sports when she was three in YMCA soccer.  She was the tallest kid on the field and she did not like to try and kick the ball hard because she was worried about hurting one of the other, smaller kids, who had not problem kicking her.  This “I don’t want to hurt anyone” attitude kept Carter from being interested in most team sports so she gravitated to horseback riding and swimming.

Today Carter is less worried about hurting someone else and she is still a target to get hurt by the other teams.  This last week of basketball had three games.  The first two were against really great teams and were hard fought contests. Carter limped home on Tuesday with a bruised hip from going down in a tussle over the ball and a back eye from a skinny girl’s sharp elbow.  Both those matches were in the loss column.

Yesterday’s final game was the last chance for this team of really nice girls to go out on top.  The game started with a star player passing Carter the ball so she could make the first basket.  It was the start of a great game where the score was 24-2 at the half in favor of Carter’s team.  Every girl seemed to be playing her best and I feel that everyone made at least one basket.  Our team of parents was living high on the sidelines.  I asked that we all memorize exactly where we were sitting and what we were wearing so we could repeat it next year.  No sport superstitions here.

Then, just as I was thinking that this basketball season was going to end on a total high, Carter stepped an opponent’s foot and rolled her ankle going down to the floor.  When she did not get up the coach and my husband went out to the court to move her to the sidelines.  Carter said she heard a crack, which she has said at least four times before when she has in fact broken bones.  So off to Triangle Orthopedics she and I went where they have the Carter Lange VIP treatment room from her frequent visits.

After text consolations with her personal Ortho doctor Mack Aldridge and his remote x-ray reading, a bad sprain was the verdict.  My sideline job as a radiologist looking at the print out of her various x-rays confirmed the good doctor’s pronouncement. Treatment involved Carter needing to wear one of her many orthopedic walking boots for seven to ten days.  The celebration ensued until in the car on the way home Carter remembered that today is the school dance.  I made her promise to keep the boot on for the dance.  I am not taking her back to Triangle Ortho again tonight.