Coach’s Son Makes 37 Appearances in PeeWee League “One Shining Moment” Video

By Mike Range

DES MOINES, Iowa - The Eastern Des Moines Rec Center “8 and Under” Basketball tournament (Moines Madness) is in the books after the Swish Kebabs stormed back — scoring half their points in the fourth quarter — to defeat Hoop, There It Is 8–6.

Immediately after, the teams gathered around six tables at the Pizza Hut on Route 14 for the Awards Banquet, highlighted by playing “One Shining Moment” on Coach Nelson’s iPad.

Kids and parents alike were looking forward to seeing the youths’ cute — if not overly athletic — highlights, but the mood quickly deflated when it became apparent that ninety percent of the video was of Coach Nelson’s son Caleb.

“We wondered how he could have finished the video already,” said one flabbergasted parent. “Turns out he had his wife stop filming after the first round when his Three-Birds — like they could make a shot from the foul line, let alone the arc — got eliminated.”

“Caleb dribbling poorly, Caleb shooting poorly, Caleb tripping over his untied shoe but the coach trying to edit it to look like he was diving for a loose ball,” moaned one mom. “But mostly Caleb traveling. The kid doesn’t care that you can’t take more than two steps. To be fair, neither do most NBA players, but Caleb is pretty much playing rugby out there.”

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Observers maintain that despite Coach Nelson looping the song five times to squeeze in more action, the only time most of their kids appeared in the video was in reaction shots to Caleb’s performance, though the amazed expressions were actually sloppily spliced in from when Minnesota Timberwolves mascot Crunch the Wolf showed up to toss the ball for the tournament’s opening tipoff.

(A toss that was snatched out of the air by one Caleb Nelson, who proceeded to bounce a shot off the underside of the rim after sprinting to the basket without the ball once touching the floor.)

“Look, Caleb’s a nice kid, but he couldn’t make a layup with fifty tries and a ladder,” said one dad, despondently gnawing on a fistful of the Hut’s parmesan-crusted cheese sticks. “My kid actually made a ten-foot set shot to win the championship game, but the only time he was in the video was when Caleb ran past him clutching the ball on his way to the wrong basket.”

In fact, nobody in attendance at the tournament could remember Caleb making a single shot, not even during warmups. “Does the coach think we can’t tell that the quick cuts of Caleb’s “made” shots were banking off the backboard in his driveway? For god’s sake, it was raining during some of them, and you could see the coach’s Apple watch on the arm taking the shots.”

End of the Bench has confirmed that as the banquet ended, Coach Nelson awarded Caleb the title of “Most Valuable Player” and the last four slices of the Stuffed Crust Double Pepperoni.

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