It’s easy to watch varsity basketball teams play so well one minute and so poorly the next minute and wonder what in the world the players were thinking.

It’s also easy to forget the players are kids. Some of them aren’t old enough to drive a car. Others can’t enter an R-rated movie and the majority of them aren’t old enough to vote.

I was taken by that thought Monday after watching Leesville’s boys triple the score of the East Wake boys in the first quarter and witnessing the Warriors pull back to within a couple possessions at the half.

It made me question how two quarters of play could be like day and night. While it’s more probable a team in the Warriors’ position would have up and folded, I wondered what the first quarter would have looked like if they had the same come-back effort they showed in the first half.

It’s certainly something coaches must wonder about too. It’s their job to figure out how to get consistency out of young players that frankly aren’t old enough to be consistent just yet — at least not all of them.

It is understandable things can get frustrating for coaches when things don’t go their way; especially when their team shows spurts of brilliance that prove it could blow its opponent out of the water if the brilliance was applied for four full quarters.

East Wake coach Darrin Stinson was in that boat Monday night. His 2-7 Warriors showed they were hungry for a win, but simply got off to a late start.

Sure things could’ve gone different down the stretch. The Warriors missed easy lay-ups. They turned the ball over instead of making easy baskets, and fighting from behind they needed the big baskets — they were in no position to depend on clock management and foul drawing to pull them back in the game.

Stinson’s frustration was visible, and I don’t blame him. His team was a few buckets away from rallying for a win over a Cap 8 team. Instead of going into the locker room with such positives to talk about, the Warriors’ story remained one of unresolved issues.

Stinson calmly shook hands with the Pride players but stormed off the court immediately after. That’s when I had the thought coaches have so much invested in their teams and want them to succeed so much sometimes they lose sight of the big picture.

But on the other end of my deep thought, I caught up with Stinson in his office after the game. After a few minutes of solitude it was very clear he had regrouped. He must have had the same thought I settled on — that at the end of the day the kids are just kids.

Stinson wasn’t pleased with the factors of the game that led to defeat, but he didn’t hold it against his team.

He only praised his players’ effort for fighting back when it seemed next to impossible, and I thought it took a lot of class for him to retain such a clear mind considering the emotion that encompassed him during the game.