Diary Of A Baller: Elliot Cadeau (West Orange, NJ) Entry #4

Patrick School

Basketball World! This has been another intense and fun week! 

Monday - Me and my team had a game against North Star Academy in Newark. We won the game by 69 with the final score being 100-31. It was really easy and I had the play the whole game because we didn't have any subs. The rest of the week I stayed after school to watch and support the other Academy teams.

Tuesday-Friday I worked out as usual in school. At the Academy we train 4 hours a day so I took those 4 hours and made the best of them, to get prepared for my next tournament. Me and a couple of my classmates where going to MADE Hoops so Coach Tarik made sure that we put up a lot of shots and didn’t strain our muscles. With Delson we worked on ball handling and that is always needed. In fitness Coach Marcus had us focusing on getting our ankles and legs stronger. This is important so we don’t easily get injured. We did a lot of preventive stretches. One great thing with being at the Basketball Academy at the Patrick School is that we get all the training we need during the school day. So, I don’t have to rush around after school to get my training in. All I do after school is our school games and IZOD practices. 

On Thursday evening we had an IZOD work out where Coach Brian worked me and a few other team mates out. It was a great work out and I felt ready for the weekend’s tournament. In my last tournament in Sweden I felt that I could have had a better attitude and could have controlled the team better so that was my goal for the MADE Hoops tournament. 

On Friday I left right after school to go to the tournament in Springfield, Massachusetts. The car ride was about 3 hours and we drove straight to the hotel. We were a little worried about all the snow they had said was going to fall but it was no problem.

On Saturday I woke up early for a 10 o’clock game. We beat Hilltoppers by 25 and I didn’t play too much because the coach wanted to save my energy for the next game. The next game was at 4:00pm against Georgia Fusion. I had a double double and we won by 30. After that game I went to go watch Anthony Edwards play Monteverde at the Hoop Hall Classic high school tournament which was close to the gym where we played. After watching that game, I stayed and watched the TPS game at 9:00 pm to support my school. After watching those games, I went to the hotel and went to sleep so I would be ready for Sunday’s game. We had to take our time driving back because it snowed and was freezing rain. 

On Sunday I got to sleep in because my first game, against Riverside was changed to 12:45. The game was intense and the gym was really loud because we played one of our rival teams. We won that game by 20 points and I had 24. After the game I went to watch some of my school mates play their games. And then we slowly drove home in ice and snow. This week I will work on my shots because I didn’t hit too many this weekend. Now I need to get ready for the Bball Spotlight tournament and then Session 3 of MADE Hoops right after that. Next week I will talk about a hard choice I have to make. 

Elliot - out