DJ Frandsen Tournament Championship Game

I hate to lose.  And while we played a solid game vs a WCAL caliber team, I still hate to lose.  We jumped out to such a great start going up 14-2 and when they called time out after that run I was so pumped in the way we were playing and that we were going to bring home the championship.  They immediately came back and we fought a close game all the way before falling to them in the end.

I know almost all the guys on the Palo Alto team and truth be told I wore the Palo Alto green uniform as my very first "real" basketball uniform.

In fact I started Palo Alto NJB in 3rd grade and played with Alex Frazier (Big Al) of St. Francis and Mathias Schmutz of Paly (Mai Tai) in 3rd grade all stars and even got a trip to Vegas for the NJB tournament.

Me and Al in 3rd grade

Vegas runner ups with Coach Ben Ball and Mathias Schmutz (first row far right)

Of course I am the super enthusiastic one in the back row next to Al

Then in 4th grade I got to try out for All-Net and played up a year to get a chance to play with some really good players throughout the years and for a great coach in Jim Geers who let this little young kid (many times I was almost 2 years younger than my teammates) run the point.  Coach Geers taught me so much about basketball during my early years of basketball.  On our NJB All-Net team were some great friends and great athletes.  Guys who played with us included:  Jimmy Frazier (Saint Francis), Ian Proux (Menlo-Atherton), BJ Boyd (Palo Alto), David Mapa (Saint Francis), Aaron Zelinger (Palo Alto), Austin Braff (Palo Alto) and Tori Prati (Palo Alto) who was on the Palo Alto team who beat us this night at Bellarmine.  Tori is great basketball and football player and it is always great to see him and he is probably off to John Hopkins to play football next year.  

 NJB Champs

Tori, Me and Jimmy

So we did ultimately lose this game to Palo Alto and Israel Hakeem won the outstanding player award and Alex Wong won the Spirit of DJ for Palo Alto.  An article that re-counts the game may be read here from PrepSportsDok.

A real highlight of the tournament this year was Jack Fordyce #34 of our team.  Jack played another consistently outstanding game as he has been all season.  As a senior, this is his first year playing high school basketball and we NEED him as he is scoring, rebounding, blocking shots and playing great defense.  His attitude, effort and story of tenacity to play Bellarmine Basketball is just the kind of recognition suited for the Spirit of DJ Award which Jack won this year.  Congratulations to Jack Fordyce for winning that very significant award and thank goodness we have him on our team this year!

 Jack Fordyce #34 scoring over #4 Kenny Jones and #33 Aubrey Dawkins

Jack receiving his award from Coach Frandsen (father of DJ)

I really appreciated Coach Schneider's talk at the end of the game which was basically to put this behind us and enjoy Christmas.  Merry Christmas!!  Next game: Monta Vista Danville 12/28 7PM at Bellarmine.