So, our sixth grade protege and our eighth grade mean girl were headed for a show down. There was a twist, though. The sixth grader was the kind of kid who gets in a lot of trouble. Angry, confrontational, and downright defiant, she was hard to like. The eighth grader on the other hand was good at staying out of trouble. Intelligent and shrewd enough to be generally compliant and polite, she was widely considered to be a good kid. Not everyone was fooled by her nice girl act, but enough adults were that she was able to get away with certain things.
On our team, we value effort, and physically, we push the girls hard. This didn't go over too well with the sixth grader, who was more inclined to jog than to sprint through the drills. She had no patience for practice, she just wanted to play her game, and she got a fair amount of redirection from both of us coaches because of it. She had a bit of an inflated opinion about her skills, too; despite her lack of experience and conditioning, she honestly believed that she should be our starting point guard, and she said so to whoever would listen.
At the first home game of the season, sixth grade girl sat on the bench and watched the team lose. Afterward, her well-meaning friends all assured her that the outcome would have been different had she been on the court, a point she eagerly raised at the next practice. Did eighth grade girl feel threatened? I doubt it, but the audacity of the challenge was something she couldn't let go, and after all, she was a mean girl.
Half-time.
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