Native American tourney expanding reach
The Native American Basketball Invitational (NABI) is expanding its reach into tribal communities through official NABI-endorsed tournaments, the organization has announced.
“This new NABI program will not only increase NABI’s footprint across the country, but will allow NABI to pay it forward by using its 20-plus years of resources and experience to assist allNative tournaments in their growth,” NABI president GinaMarie Scarpa said in a news release. “NABI will market each tournament through its vast database and assist organizers with merchandise branding to increase revenue and improve tournament sustainability.”
The 2024 NABI-endorsed tournament lineup includes three events that take place from May 3-5 at Ak-Chin Indian Community in Maricopa, Arizona, May 31-June 2 at Navajo Nation in Window Rock, Arizona and June 28-30 in Seattle, Washington.
Since 2003, NABI has been known as the largest all Native American Basketball tournament in North America, with supporters such as the Phoenix Suns, Phoenix Mercury, Nike N7, and other major corporations across the U.S. The tournament, featuring boys and girls teams from tribal communities around the country, is held in Phoenix each summer.
The idea brewed from a coffee shop in 2002, where Scarpa and former Phoenix Suns player Mark West were inspired by the late Scott Podleski’s vision to help out local Arizona tribes by providing a platform for Native American athletes to showcase their abilities, especially when it came to “Rez Ball,” a term associated with the game’s popularity in Native Americans communities.
They brought the idea of NABI to numerous major corporations, such as the Suns and Nike, where the idea took off.
“It spread like wildfire across Indian Country that we were starting this Rez ball tournament,” Scarpa told The Arizona Republic. “And with all our resources, it’s become a Cinderella story ever since.”
NABI started out with 20 teams and has grown to 196 teams as of 2024. The event stirred so much demand it had to turn teams away for the time being. NABI parted ways with Nike, a decision that Scarpa felt was hard yet rewarding, and created its own brand, Nabi Nation.
“It wasn’t an easy decision for me to make and let go of Nike,” Scarpa said. “Actually, when I did it, I had that moment of, ‘Oh my God, what did I do?’ But we instantly grew. We decided to selfproduce our own uniforms under our Nabi Nation merch line and we just took off since then. This will be our second
year without Nike, and we just continue to grow.”
Rez Ball tournaments throughout the United States often lack resources, but with the endorsement of NABI and its databases, contacts and the use of NABI Nation merch, these tournaments are now marketed by NABI with the intent of growing.
“We thought it would be a great way for entrepreneurship, for tribal members to help, for us to help build them up,” Scarpa said.
NABI’s mission is centered on paving the path for young players to college and nurturing them to become better leaders.
Since 2003, NABI has distributed more than $450,000 in scholarships to aid Native American college students.
Education is NABI’s primary focus.
But Scarpa said the organization wants to accomplish more.
“You can never do enough, right?” Scarpa said. “Especially when it comes to our travel youth . ... Their dropout rates in high school, chemical dependency, abuse ... everything is higher than our national averages. It’s a community of youth, it’s a community of people that has actually been kind of lost in it all. And to be able to do this for the last 20 years, along with Mark West and Scott Podleski, and continue to make this kind of our mission, our footprint, means a lot to me.
“I just felt like it was a missing part of the puzzle for me. So to be able to dedicate myself, not only working in kind of a capacity of with kids and helping kids, I’m able to help our indigenous kids. It means a lot to me.”