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Throughout the year we'll hear from eight bloggers as they share about their family's time in the brand-new Riley Children's Health Sports Legends Experience® and how it inspires them to explore these sports back at home.
This post was written by Children's Museum Blog Ambassadors Katie and Luis Ruvalcaba. Follow their posts on the blog and follow them on Instagram @ruvalcademy.
It's March and the Ruvalcabas are from Tucson, Arizona. So, naturally, we walked into the Riley Children's Health Sports Legends Experience® with one thought on our minds: basketball. Thursday, as we participated in a preview of the newest exhibits and experiences at The Children's Museum we were walking tall, confident our Wildcats would be playing for at least a few more weeks. Friday morning we were in for a bit of a shock, to say the least. The Cats were KILLED by 13 seed Buffalo. If nothing else, this teaches us the value of hard work, humility, and the underdog!
Hard work, humility, and the underdog…. gee… where did we see that play out at the sports experience? Oh yeah! Remember that one time when Reggie Miller scored 8 points in 9 seconds! If you’ve never seen it, check out the video. Reggie catches the inbound pass, puts it up for three, steals the ball, ANOTHER three and draws a shooting foul for two more points. It's bananas, it's incredible, it's a death blow to the New York Knicks. In the History of Hoops in the sports experience you can follow a spotlight to help you try your best to do the impossible. This was easily Merritt’s favorite exhibit. He’s a bit like a cat—shiny lights on the floor really appeal to him.
Here at the Ruvalcademy we’ve been talking a lot about health, nutrition, and fitness. We’ve stepped up our PE game and we felt really capable of tackling this challenge. Eight points in nine seconds? No problem for these kids! After a good breakfast of oatmeal, bananas, and scrambled eggs, we took to our local gym—ready to show Reggie Miller how genuinely awesome we were. After all, he had the clock stopped for two of those 8 points, we felt sure we could get our shots off in 9 ACTUAL seconds.
Turns out, much like our beloved Wildcats, we were a little over confident. The two younger kids couldn’t manage to get the ball up to the hoop. Millie was appalled to learn that unlike the outdoor hoops in the sports experience, these hoops were 10 feet from the floor. She and Merritt pretty quickly decided to just roll the ball back and forth to one another.
Micah, on the other hand, had spent the whole car ride over telling me how simple this was going to be, and he was not going to be so easily defeated. We tried endless combinations: free throws, layups, three-pointers…You name it we tried it. If you ask Micah he’ll tell you the hardest part of the whole thing was getting the ball into your hands enough times to shoot it. It's hard work to get your own rebound!
We came to the startling realization that there was only one way it would be physically possible for us to make 8 points in 9 seconds: four consecutive, well-controlled and perfectly shot buckets from the block, alternating sides. Bad news: not only are none of us skilled enough ballers to land those shots, but it's also not a scenario that would EVER come up in an actual basketball game! For the record, Katie got the closest to Reggie’s record, scoring a whopping 6 points in 9 seconds. As a result, she got to pick what we were having for lunch. Pizza rolls for all!
Try and duplicate this experiment on your own. You might find that, like us, you have cause to perfect Reggie’s famous “choke scowl.” Once you have your very best 9 second record, head over to the Riley Children's Health Sports Legends Experience® and give the Reggie Miller interactive a try! I think you’ll find its helpful timer, well-positioned ball, x-marked court positions, and moving lights a smidge easier to reproduce Reggie's historic moment!
