Page 22 - BusinessWest September 5, 2022
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  Hooplandia
Continued from page 20
“Everything is lined up for a great event,” he went on. “It just took a little longer to get there.”
In fact, it will be roughly four years from the date it was first conceptualized until the whistle that starts the first game on June 23, 2023. But everyone involved is sure it will be worth the wait.
The March 2, 2020 issue of BusinessWest fea- tured Doleva and Eugene Cassidy, president and CEO of the Big E, standing on either side of a poster promoting Hooplandia. The headline read: “Nothing but Net: Hooplandia Has the Makings of a Legacy Event.”
Just a few weeks later, the state was in lock- down. A few months later, it was clear to everyone that there would be no Hooplandia in 2020. And
The cover of the March
2, 2020 edition of BusinessWest announced Hooplandia. That was just a few weeks before the pandemic shut down the state and put Hooplandia on ice for what will be three years.
concept.
That’s because of those fundamentals, he went
on, adding that what was true in those early days of 2020 remains true today — Hooplandia does have the makings of a legacy event.
“Fundamentally, and probably most impor- tantly, the idea going in, even in 2019, was to cre- ate an event that would be around for 40 years or more, just like in Spokane,” Rivers explained. “So if you’re looking at creating an event that’s a 40-year event, it doesn’t get stale after a few years — it’s still a grand idea and still a great proposi- tion for the region. It’s not like three-on-three basketball went away or Springfield is no longer the birthplace of the game. Those things didn’t change.”
Essentially, organizers are picking up where they left off, said Cassidy, with expectations that
“Fundamentally, and probably most importantly, the idea going in, even in 2019, was to create an event that would be around for 40 years or more, just like in Spokane. So if you’re looking at creating an event that’s a 40-year event, it doesn’t get stale after a few years — it’s still a grand idea and still a great proposition for the region.”
as the pandemic persisted and sub- sequent surges continued to hit the nation and the region, the tourna- ment was scrapped for 2021 as well.
And while the situation improved somewhat that year — enough for the Big E to make a much-anticipat- ed comeback after being idled for 2020 — there were too many uncer- tainties and not enough time to put a tournament in place for 2022, Riv- ers said.
“We thought we could do it in 2021, but there was still a lot of overhang related to crowd gather- ing and big events,” he said. “And with Hooplandia, you need almost a year’s run-up, because you open up
         Turning back the clock, Rivers said planning for Hooplandia began in early 2019. Inspired by a huge tournament in Spokane, Wash. called Hoop- town USA that brings tens of thousands of people to that city every June, Rivers conceived of a con- cept that would unite the Big E and the Hall of Fame in an endeavor that would capitalize on the soaring popularity of three-on-three basketball and bring the game to the area where the sport was invented.
registration six months prior and mobilize your whole organization, and we couldn’t predict what June 2021 was going to look like. Then, we get into 2021, and we just didn’t have enough time to get it organized for ’22; and once you commit, you commit, and we were fearful about putting a lot of time and resources into this and having to pull the plug again.”
But through all of that, no one involved in Hooplandia had any thoughts of giving up on this
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