Every school holidays, Helping Hoops puts on a special tournament as a reward-for-effort for our kids. The April 2014 holidays saw us head to Fitzroy and team up with our friends at Yarra Youth Services, who put on the Spectacle Festival.
Spectacle saw DJs, performers, artists and skaters rock the Atherton Gardens public housing estate (home to the Helping Hoops Fitzroy program every Monday), and this provided the perform setting for the Helping Hoops Fitzroy Tournament. Despite the gloomy, foreboding skies, over 30 young men and women laced up to take part.
The tournament saw a morning clinic with Helping Hoops coach Mike Spears, where players were assessed and put into four teams for the afternoon’s games. The team announcements followed, then it was time for the half-court, four-on-four tournament to kick off.
Despite it being a fun event, the natural competitive nature of the kids shone through, but all within the context of good sportsmanship and fairness. The kids should be applauded for this “no-fuss” attitude that made the day a pleasure to run. Coach Mike refereed all games while provided a colourful running commentary as only he can.
Unfortunately, the dark skies finally opened and gradually made court conditions unsafe around 3pm. This still gave us time to reshuffle the schedule and run a condensed grand final between the two undefeated teams. A quick prize presentation was made before kids, and Helping Hoops staff and volunteers, scattered to escape the heavy rain.
For the record, the Red Team won!
Thanks goes out to Yarra Youth Services for putting on the Spectacle Festival and inviting the Helping Hoops Fitzroy Tournament to be a part of the activities. We look forward to bringing our next school holiday tournament to a location to be announced. Stay tuned.
