After some uncertainty, Hoops in the Highlands is back to being an annual fixture
Photography by Carol Toler
Much like the Fourth of July parade and Oktoberfest, Hoops in the Highlands has been a staple in our neighborhood for decades.
But the neighborhood’s tradition of hosting a K-8 street basketball tournament every spring hasn’t exactly been an annual fixture since 2018. Hoops was customarily held outdoors in a church parking lot.
In 2019, it was canceled due to rain. In 2020 and 2021, COVID-era restrictions forced organizers to scrap plans.
After three years of no Hoops, there were some doubts as to the tournament’s future, but Kris and Michelle Hill, who have run the event since 2020, decided that the annual tournament would stay just that.
Their first move to bring Hoops back in 2022?
Move the games indoors.
“I was like, ‘We can’t bring this thing back to life after four years of hibernation and having it canceled by rain’” Kris says.
The couple reached out to Lake Highlands High School Head Basketball Coach Joe Duffield. UIL basketball season ends before the weekend normally set aside for Hoops, so there wasn’t much of a scheduling conflict for the LHHS gym.
“We were worried, but the community showed up,” Michelle says. “Our sponsors were ready to jump back in. We were able to do new sponsors because it was Kris and myself and our contacts. So we kind of had fresh ideas there, but once we put it out there on social media, it was a Kevin Costner Field of Dreams moment, like, ‘If you build it, they will come,’ and we had a full gym.”
Michelle says one of the first noticeable benefits — aside from taking weather out of the equation — was that asphalt burns were no longer a concern for an on-site nurse, who hasn’t been in demand as much since moving to the high school. Moving indoors also helped bring the high school crowd into the mix.
“This is a Lake Highlands event that has brought Joe Duffield into it. He’s there both days, all day, and he’s watching,” Michelle says. “And a couple years ago, we had some of the state championship basketball players kind of walk around, and kids took pictures. It kind of took it to the next level of bringing in the older community, and in my opinion, I’ve been pleasantly surprised with how that bond has kind of come about.”
Hoops was started in the early 2000s as a fundraiser for Lake Highlands area schools. The tournament also raises money for the middle school, feeder elementaries, and since moving in at LHHS, the Wildcat Booster Club, which supports LHHS athletics.
The Hills estimate Hoops typically hosts around 300teams, with around 1,000 games played throughout Friday night and Saturday. Teams plan out names, rosters and whose parents are handling registration months beforehand. While things have changed a bit over the past few years, one thing remains constant: T-shirts are king.
“Elementary school kids, especially boys, will wear a Dri Fit T-shirt,” Kris says. “That’s all they want to wear, right? And so with Hoops, I guess we revamp the logo a little bit, but one cool thing about Hoops is every year there’s a new colorway for the shirts, and if you go to any elementary schools in Lake Highlands during the recess hour, you will see the rainbow of colors of year after year of Hoops shirts and it predominates. If somebody would chart that out to see, like the kids wearing Nike versus Hoop shirts or whatever, I think that Hoops would be right up there with everything, because kids love it, and they keep them.”
Now that the tournament takes place at the high school, area song and dance groups provide entertainment in the LHHS Hub, and neighborhood dads have taken to setting up impromptu food stands with breakfast tacos and burgers thrown on grills brought from home. It’s a far cry from 2020, when it seemed as if COVID would finally break the proverbial camel’s back and end a decades-long neighborhood tradition.
One of the more tangible changes since the Hills took over was registering Hoops as a nonprofit organization. They say the change sets up the tournament to better reflect the expanding scope of its undertaking and operate more as a business, while still staying true to its roots.
The running of the tournament normally passes from family to family like the Hills, who say their time as organizers is coming to an end. Hoops in the Highlands, however, doesn’t seem like it will be going anywhere anytime soon.
“We made a lot of changes and are getting it ready to hand off to another family. We need it to be in good shape before we do that.”
