Registration has officially opened for Hoops in the Highlands, Lake Highlands’ annual K-8 3-on-3 basketball tournament.
Photo by Carol Toler.
Registration for the tournament opened on Monday, with Hoops set to take place on March 28 and 29 at Lake Highlands High School. The tournament is open to boys and girls from kindergarten through eighth grade. Teams must register a minimum of three players, and a coach is required to sign up.
The event raises money for Lake Highlands Middle School, its feeder elementary schools, and now that Hoops takes place at the high school, the Wildcat Club. Multiple levels of sponsorship opportunities are available, information on which is available on Hoops’ website.
While it may no longer be held in Shoreline City Church’s parking lot, Hoops has remained a near constant in our neighborhood for over two decades. The annual tradition dates back to 2004, when it was started as a PTA fundraiser for Lake Highlands area schools.
Starting in 2017, doubts began to spread as to Hoops’ future. After reports of organizer fatigue in 2017, a rainout in 2019 and two consecutive years of COVID cancellations in the following years, one could be forgiven for assuming Hoops had come to the end of the road.
Kris and Michelle Hill took over the event in 2020. After being forced to cancel the event in 2020 in 2021, they decided to help rejuvenate the event — and eliminate the possibility of another rainout — by moving it indoors at the high school.
“We were worried that it would be but the community showed up. Our sponsors were ready to jump back in,” Michelle said. “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, like ‘Hey, Hoops is back. Let’s do this.’ It was a Kevin Costner Field of Dreams moment, if you build it, they will come. And we had a full gym.”
Hoops hasn’t missed a beat since then, and it seems as though the annual neighborhood tradition is back to being just that.
Registration opened on Febrary 10 and will remain open until early March. Information can be found on the event website.
