To steal the a line from Rodney Dangerfield, “We don’t get no respect”.

Last weekend my JV boy’s team participated in the annual Leo Hayes JV / Devon Park Invitational tournament.For those not familiar with this event, Leo Hayes Jr. Varsity boys and the Devon Park Sr. boys co-host a tournament that traditionally includes the top ‘AAA’ JV teams and the top ‘A’ varsity schools (actually, with last year’s realignment of the NBIAA school classifications, these schools are now classified ‘AA’ but that’s a different discussion).

Personally I love attending this tournament. Not only do I get to see players from schools I seldom would see otherwise, but my players have a chance to play against athletes that are taller, quicker and a lot stronger. This year, my 4th year of bringing the KVHS Jr. boys, was no different.

This year we were fortunate enough to win both our games against the varsity squads, including an exciting win over Devon Park Sr. boys in the tournament final. In the days following the tournament, however, whenever the topic comes up I get the standard response “Really! You beat Devon Park? Were they missing anyone?”. Talk about no respect!

I’m sure coach MacAloon is hearing the same thing in reverse…“How could you lose to those guys?”.

In the four years we attended this tournament my teams have compiled a overall record of 6-5 against varsity teams (including this year’s wins). In those five loses the winning margin for our opponent was 6, 7, 5, 12, and 22 points. Not exactly blow outs (Well, the 22 pts lost to McAdam last year one was). Our winning margin the the six wins were 20, 12, 20, 15, 27 and 16.

It seems to me that the top ‘AAA’ JV programs are pretty competitive with the top ‘AA’ Sr. programs on any given year. I suspect the same applies at the “mid-level” for both groups as well. Perhaps this is an alternative for these teams to find competitive games without increasing the need to travel, however, I suspect the coaches on the ‘AA’ Sr. teams might be hesitant to play younger ‘AAA’ teams given all the talk following our win this weekend.

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