Page 23 - BusinessWest September 5, 2022

Young players get a taste for 3-on-3 basketball at the press conference announcing the Hooplandia event set for June, 2023.
the 2023 event will draw 1,000 or more teams (4,000 players) across a number of categories
— from youths to veterans; from those in wheel- chairs to what would be considered professionals in this sport — and that it will grow over time to draw several thousand teams and someday rival Spokane’s event in terms of size and prestige.
The original plan was to mobilize the grounds
of the Eastern States, play a handful of games at the Hall of Fame, have both organizations work together on marketing and promoting the event, and conduct some outreach to basketball organi- zations and teams throughout the Northeast, Riv- ers said. And, by and large, that is still the plan.
If anything, he went on, three-on-three bas- ketball is probably even more popular than it was when Hooplandia was first conceived.
“It’s now an Olympic sport, it’s now an inter- national sport with national teams representing their countries in international play, and there’s more and more tournaments around the country that are focusing on this caliber of basketball,” he explained. “So it’s become a little more common, and I think we have a great opportunity to be a leader in that segment.”
Doleva agreed.
“No one has stepped back from that, and I guess that’s the big thing,” he said. “No one has said, ‘let’s do this on a 25% scale.’ It’s all hands on deck.”
Elaborating, he said local organizers have Spo- kane as a target, with a goal of seeing Hooplandia approach and even exceed that scale when it comes to everything from the number of partici- pating teams to the impact on the local economy.
“Spokane is the benchmark because that is an economic driver — it’s an annual event that brings tens of millions of dollars to the local economy,” Doleva told BusinessWest. “To bring in 1,500 teams and grow that every year to 10,000, that’s a big initiative, but it’s not an unrealistic goal.”
Hooplandia will actually be staged the same weekend as the festival in Spokane, but organiz- ers don’t see it as competition for that event.
“We’re 3,000 miles away,” Doleva said. “We see this an opportunity for people from the Midwest east to come to Springfield and play in a tourna- ment where they might not have gone all the way to the West Coast — and you have the allure of
“Spokane is the benchmark
because that is an economic driver
— it’s an annual event that brings
tens of millions of dollars to the
local economy. To bring in 1,500
teams and grow that every year to
10,000, that’s a big initiative, but
it’s not an unrealistic goal. ”
the Hall of Fame.”
These are more of the fundamentals that
prompted organizers to take Hooplandia from the drawing board to reality more than three years ago. And they are the fundamentals that have prompted them to stay the course — and stay on course — through more whitewater than anyone could have imagined in early March 2020.
As Cassidy told BusinessWest and all those assembled at a recent press conference to announce the new date for the tournament, “it’s game on for 2023!” u
George O’Brien can be reached at [email protected]
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