Entry #1: Michael Tehan (Pre-Season)

“POUND POUND POUND”

The sound of the ball hitting the floor. It all started in 6th grade when my friend Sam joined pybl for the winter league. I did not know much about pybl at the time, so I decided to follow them on instagram. The constant posts of stats and results were really cool. Then I found out they were having a summer league.  I knew I had to tryout for loudoun.   About 2 weeks before  the tryout the nerves kicked in. I was in the gym everyday for 2 weeks correcting bad habits and working on my shot. Then it came, the day of tryouts. All I could think about at school was tryouts. I tried to play football after school to get  my mind off it, but that didn’t help. My friend, Cole,  who was also trying out came over and we just sat there nervously until our ride came. When it came, we hopped in the car and drove off. When I got there I was so nervous I was shaking. Everyone was huddled up and coach was talking to us. Then he had us do lay ups. After, we did some other drill that I had never done before.  It was sorta confusing but fun. Then 1 v 1, 2 v 2, 3 v 3, and 4 v 4 half court minnie games. Then it changed 5 v 5, I knew I had to make an impression. It was a hard, fast, aggressive AAU style of play which is not how my Flexx AAU team plays.  I did it!  My shot was on and I played well.  That night, I got the email that I made the team.  

A week later practice began.  Coach went over the offense, in bounds play and the press break.  Same thing for the next practice.  We were getting to know each other and starting to have some fun.  Coach entered us into a tournament so we could learn to gel together as a team.  We blew everyone out and it felt great.  So great that we decided to do another one the next weekend.  We blew everyone out again until the championship game.  The team we played in the championship was from Raleigh, North Carolina and they were big, fast and aggressive.  It was even until midway through the second half.  We stuck to our game plan and finally the other team began to fall apart. They turned the ball over and started to make mistakes which gave us the opportunity to pull ahead.  We won by 24 points.  Thats when I knew we were going to have a great summer season.  I can’t wait for June 9, our first PYBL game.