So far....

Well, the spring AAU tourney season is underway, and so far things are going pretty well.

On March 29-30, Kionna participated in the Iowa State AAU Junior Eligible tournament with the IBCA Select Red Team. She has changed teams this year (last year playing with the All Iowa Attack Regional and National teams). Tryouts were in early March, and the team was able to practice twice prior to the tournament. The team is packed with talent, they are tall (5 of the 10 girls are 6' or taller), and they have two of the best point guards in the state of Iowa - Jaime Printy (Linn Marr) and Trisha Nesbitt (I might be a bit biased, as Trisha is Kionna's varsity point guard during the school ball season).

The Red team won the tournament fairly soundly, although Team Iowa - an all freshmen team - gave them a hard time both times they battled during the weekend. It was a great opportunity for the girls to see each other in action, and get a feel for the areas that they can improve. Kionna played well, but should be working on ball handling and shooting outside the paint.

Here are a couple youtube.com links to the game vs. the All Iowa Attack team (the team she played for last year).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eVHyPCGTyCo

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c8G316KOxxs

Shaya went to Missouri with her dad this past weekend with the All Iowa Attack 12U team (7th grade) and played up in the 8th grade Show-Me Classic in Springfield. This was a great tournament for them to play in because they were challenged in every game. They were playing with a few less girls than usual, but everyone stepped up and they ended up getting runner-up in the tournament. In the semi-final game, they beat the 8th grade Attack team for the first time. This team was missing one of their girls due to an injury, and have undergone some changes as of late (losing players and changing coaches), but it was still quite a feat for the 7th grade team to win this game. We will look forward to hopefully continuing challenges in tourneys, as the girls really played well together.