Hardwood Happenings

On Feb. 12th we will be breaking ground for our new school and as a basketball coach it will be exciting to watch the new gym being built. Based on what I have heard and on visiting other gyms, ours will be very similar to that of Scott County. If you have not visited that gym, it is a beautiful facility.

Once our gym is complete — hopefully in time for the 2008-09 season — I think about what a great tournament we could host. Just think, we are centrally located and, more important, we would have access to 5 gyms within a few miles, four of which will be on the same campus.

I don’t know of any school in the state of Kentucky that will be able to say that. We have enough hotels in the area and restaurants that it could become one of the state’s best.

Now I realize this takes an enormous amount of work and community support in order to pull it off, but just think what it would give back to the community.

Most of the successful tournaments have one big sponsor and then several smaller ones to help offset all the costs involved. The most expensive part is paying for officials. I would propose that is be a boy/girl tournament and involve as many of the local teams that would like to be involved and then invite others from around the state.

So if you invited 16 boys teams and 16 girls teams, just think of the tournament we could have right here in Mercer County.

When I was playing for Harrodsburg in the 1980’s we always had the Fort Harrod Classic (that later changed to the McDonalds Classic) and I always looked forward to that event every year. I also remember several years ago, when the girls program here hosted the Dairy Queen classic that was regarded as one of the state’s best girls Christmas tournaments.

I think we would be doing great to get another tournament going and involve both the girls and boys teams.

Back to the sponsor thing, I know when I look into a tournament for my team I am always looking at what they have to offer. Some of the things I look at are; how many games are you guaranteed, do they offer any hotel rooms or discounted rooms, do they feed your kids and proximity of gyms that you have to travel to.

Like I said, this would have to be a community effort to pull off and could be a great fundraiser for our basketball teams and we all know about fundraising and that if never ends! My basic point is that it takes a lot of money to put on a tournament that people will want to come back to year in and year out and, if you don’t have a good sponsors, you without a doubt lose money.

When would be a good time of year to hold this tournament? Most tournaments are either the week before Christmas or the week after. I prefer the week before Christmas, because you have less threat of bad weather and personally I like to take my team to a tournament once a year that we can spend a night or two, and I like to do that after Christmas.

There are several high profile tournaments before Christmas that could cause us to look at another time, but I think with our location and plenty of gyms in such a close range and if we offered boy/girl tournament we would have plenty to offer to hold our own.

I think we could even get this going before the new school is built and once it is built just add to it. We have three gyms here on this campus and also the gym on the Lexington Street Campus (Harrodsburg gym).

What would you call it? I guess that would depend on sponsors — if you got a big sponsor name it after them. I kind of like going back to when it was first started here and call it the Fort Harrod Classic Tournament. How about “Titan Town Winter Slam.”

Hey just a suggestion, what does anyone else think? What do you think about the tournament idea and what would you name it?

Just a little predicition here: UK 78 Florida 69!!

Ok, I am probably thinking with my heart and not my head, but hey anybody can beat anybody on any give night. Rupp will be rockin’.

Until next week, keep your head up and shoot with confidence!