One thing I will add about the private school games I watched Saturday - we caught the 2nd half of the game before ours and it was a 6th grade game between 2 private schools. I was amazed at the skills displayed by one of those teams. I have watched a bunch of 7th and 8th grade games in my life, and that 6th grade team could have pounded most of them. And it wasn't due to physical ability; these kids were just well coached and they had obviously spent many, many hours of their young lives practicing basketball. I would suspect that most, if not all of them have fathers who have worked with them and encouraged them.

I doubt there is a future D1 basketball player on that team. They are as good as they are because of all the time they have spent developing. They may be playing in inferior gyms that don't even have a locker room, but they are developing as players and as people. Seems like a good thing to me. If they beat some future public school team, so what. These are the sort of kids that can make our country better as they mature and live their lives. I thought that was the point of amateur athletics.

All the labor of man is for his mouth, and yet the appetite is not filled.