Rural School Basketball
Winters in our neighborhood are long and cold, and the schoolkids need to shake their cabin fever. So there's basketball. With 21 students in our school in grades K-8, we've learned to be adaptable. Our school combines with another rural school in Fields, Oregon, to field the three teams that span the grades 3 through 8. Girls play with boys,and everybody plays where they're needed; second graders with fourth graders, fourth graders occasionally "playing up" with the 7th and 8th graders. Practices go long after dark on these short winter days, and the Friday games are always a couple-hour bus ride away, where kids from other rural schools combine, driving miles over mountain passes to meet friends they wouldn't see otherwise till rodeo season. Naturally, basketball pops up in the kids' poetry. Not all days are good ones:
Basketball Practice January 11
Yesterday was bad.
Running, I twisted my ankle.
I cannot move it.
Omar Villa, Grade 5