OT: Seeking opinions on granddaughter’s 1st bball game

[cabbie191]

This past week I was visiting my daughter & family who live near Syracuse. (If they don’t move, my granddaughters will possibly go to Cicero-Noth Syracuse high where Breana Stewart attended. Their house is on the border between CNS and another high school but I don’t know where the line exactly sits.)

My oldest granddaughter, age 8, played her first basketball game while I was there. She’s in a small league that’s sponsored by an area church. They have a nice gym with really high tech scoreboards. They play 6 6-minute periods and each player has colored wrist bands - you guard the player on the opposing team who wears the same color.

I’m wondering what people think about how the players were introduced before the game. It was high fanfare - the players were introduced one at a time in a darkened gym to flashing lights with their names up on the board. It was a greater production than most college games I’ve gone to.

My bias admittedly curmudgeonly - I thought it was over the top, especially for kids who are just starting to learn the basic rules and skills. (But it seems to me that they were going to make the effort to make this a special moment, the announcer should have invested some time in learning how to pronounce the kids names correctly. About half were badly mangled.).

My bias is from someone who doesn’t think much about “graduation ceremonies” from pre-school, either.

I actually don’t think it made much difference to the kids, and bottom line it was fun to see her on the court. For sure, the action gave the coaches a lot of teachable moments!

 

[Littlemin]

One comment I will make, I have done more than my share of public speaking, emceeing dinners, fund raisers, etc. And one thing I ALWAYS do religiously is make sure I have a phonetic pronunciation of every person’s name that I have to introduce, acknowledge, or otherwise bring attention to; it is not that hard to get people’s names correct.

 

[dabears17]

Coaching my daughter's 8u softball team I got many bonus points from a family from Ireland by pronouncing their daughter's name correctly that unless you spoke Gaelic, you would have no idea how to pronounce. My daughter's middle name is spelled the Gaelic way, so it is fun to watch people try to pronounce it when it's an occasion full names are used.

 

[cabbie191]

This part of New York is extraordinarily diverse and the names on the two rosters reflect this. Like Littlemin, I’ve also done a large amount of speaking - television, radio, conferences, schools, civic groups, etc. - and I also have made it point to find out name pronunciations, including ones that might seem “normal”, because sometimes there are local variations.