Love the Effort

Just got home from watching our girls take on one of the top teams in the area . . .WCA Knights 7 & 1. . .They battled hard and competed well for a good portion of the game, unfortunately we lost by 20 or so but I was soooooooo proud of the effort that these girls displayed on the court.

As I was driving home I told my own two boys that if they set their minds to making it a habit to work as hard as our girls' team did tonight they would experience a lot of success in the future.

In our highly competitive world it is easy to point out where the doer of deeds could have done better. Heck, if you go on line to http://www.minnesota-scores.net/ and check out the "basketball forum" you will find a number of people posting thoughts that are critical of our #2 ranked / 10 and 0 boys team.

I guess success is in the eye of the beholder but when you have a group of players who are working as hard as our two high school basketball teams are I have a hard time dealing with any negative comments.

That is why I think it is important to be your own judge of your success as an individual and as a team. Don't allow outside forces to establish you as a "success" or a "failure" because you are the only one who really knows if you have fought the good fight.

So even though the girls did not walk away with a victory tonight I still believe they were a huge success!

Bravo Girls! Bravo!

It's Not the Critic That Counts by Theodore Roosevelt

It's not the critic who counts, not the man who points out how the strong man stumbled, or when the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena; whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs and comes short again and again; who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions and spends himself in a worth cause; who at the best, knows in the end the triumph of high achievement; and who at the worst if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory or defeat.

Hoops Update - January 8

Wow!!!! Soooooooo much has happened since my last entry. . .

The Girls:

The girls won the first game in their Holiday Tournament over Waubun (67 to 57) and entered the championship game against Clinton Graceville Beardsley only to experience a tough shooting night and finished second in the tournament.

Scoring seems to be the nemesis for the girls this year. Defensively they seem to be pretty solid considering they are starting an eighth grader, a ninth grader and a sophomore but finding a consistent shooting touch is what this team really needs in the months ahead.

Haley Hoyer(12th) and Kendra Coleman(11th) both were named to the all-tournament team.

In their first game of 2009 the Vikings saw Haley Hoyer scored 18 points and Kendra Coleman added 13 as they defeated Breckenridge 42-24 on the Cowgirls home court Tuesday night.

“Pelican Rapids plays very good defense,” commented Breckenridge head coach Joel Herder.

The girls improved to 3 and 4 on the season with that victory and they head into back to back game against two solid teams in WCA and DGF this Friday and Saturday.

The Boys:

The boys improved to 9 – 0 on Tuesday night as the defeated the Breckenridge Cowboys 72 to 58.

The Cowboys, by far, offered the biggest test to the Vikings to this point of the season. Breckenridge has a very solid team with an excellent outside shooter, a Solid 6 foot 6 inch scorer, a big banger in the middle, a great defensive player and a solid point guard. Although there are differences in the roles that each of these players play on their team they have a very similar team to the Vikings and offered a lot of unique challenges.

Don’t be surprised to see the Cowboys make it to state out of their section!!!

Over the Holiday Break:

*Vikings beat a respectable Fergus Team 85 to 64 in the Moorhead tournament to advance to the championship where they played host Moorhead.

*For the first time in decades the Pelican Rapids boys defeated 4A Moorhead and won the championship 63 to 41

*The Vikings played Cloquet in the Timberwolves Shoot-out down at the Target Center on January 3rd. Cloquet has a 6’10” junior stud who is getting some offers from division I schools. (He had 5 or 6 dunks on the Vikings along with showing a nice shooting touch) One person, however, is not enough to compete with this year’s team and the Vikings steam rolled to a 87 to 56 win.

*Ty Storrusten became the Vikings all-time leading scorer in the Cloquet game and is on pace to hit 2000 when it is all said and done. To go along with this he also has topped Brian Korf’s assist record. Ty is as complete an athlete as we have had roll through the athletic programs of Pelican Rapids. His natural gifts are one reason why he has been so successful in the arena of competition but he has an out of this world “athletic intelligence” that just takes him to another level.

*Great article in the Fargo Forum on the “quiet wonder” also known as Eric Shulstad. The great thing that has happened this year for this young man is that colleges are finally realizing his talent and his potential to be a player for them.

*Not only will you see a number of high school coaches trying to figure out how to slow down the Vikings but you will also see a number of college coaches trying to woo a number of our players to chose their college as their next destination.