Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
Tournament of Champions marks 25th year
FORT SMITH — This year’s Tournament of Champions at Northside has perhaps the stoutest field ever in its 25-year history.
“It’ s a good field ,” Northside coach Rickey Smith said. “It’s a good tournament. We’ve got a lot of returning experience on a lot of those programs. Right now, we’re making invitations for next year and you don’t know that they’re going to go on and win a championship or play for a championship.”
Northside and Southside host the three-day tournament. Southside had its turn in the new gymnasium last year. This year, Northside hosts the event at the new Northside Arena.
“We get to showcase the two new arenas that the city of Fort Smith and patrons helped pass the millage on,” Smith said. “Now, we get to let our kids play in some of the nicest arenas in the state of Arkansas. These teams coming in get to see how much our community supports the school systems. That’s what I’m really proud of it.”
Defending Class 3A state champion Bergman highlights the eight-team tournament, which begins on Thursday.
Northside played in the Class 6A championship game last year, Lamar finished 313 and lost to Bergman in the championship game.
Southside is off to a 3-1 start after beating Mount St. Mary on Friday, 60-39, on Friday.
From Oklahoma, there’s Jones, Sapulpa and Stilwell. Junction City, Mo., rounds out the field.
Jones was 24-4 last year and has won two state titles in a row.
Stilwell was 22-7 last year and was a quarterfinalist in the state tournament.
Sapulpa was 20-7 a year ago and lost in the championship game.
Carl Junction was 23- 8 last year and has won eight straight district titles.
Through the years, the Tournament of Champions has had a good blend of out-of-state teams and local teams.
“We try to do that,” Smith said. “In girls basketball, there’s always a good following especially with the successful programs in the areas. We’ve brought in teams from Los Angeles to New York to you name it. We’ve tried to get the local teams and local programs. Ideally, we’d like to have four local teams and four regional teams. This year, we’re going four outofstate teams versus four Arkansas teams in the first round. We get a chance to play teams we don’t ever get to see very often.”
The local teams have held their own in the tournament. Last year, Northside beat Greenwood in the championship game, and both teams went on to state championship games with Greenwood winning Class 5A.
This week, the Lady Bears are playing in the Hays City Shootout in Kansas.
On Thursday, Northside beat Hugoton, the Kansas Class 3A runnerup from last year with four returning starters.
On Friday, Northside defeated Olathe, Kan., West, 5224 and will play in the championship game against Washburn Rural, the No. 1-ranked team in Kansas.
“If we can survive this competition, not to mention the 12- degree weather up here, we’ll be much stronger for next week,” Smith said. “We have one senior so this is an eye-opening experience.”
NORTHSIDE
PREPPING FOR EARLY CONFERENCE
With Northside joining the 6A-West to form a nine-team conference due to the new alignment, conference play must begin before Christmas to get all the games played before state tournament time.
“We talked about that,” Northside coach Eric Burnett said. “We’ve got to get our stuff together. We’ve got a conference game before Christmas.”
For a lot of teams, that means fitting the football players into their places along with the early start to conference.
“We’ve got to get our football guys in shape,” Burnett said. “Once we get them in shape, I’ll think we’ll be alright. We’ve just got to get them in the gym and get the ball in their hand.”
The Grizzlies competed in a tournament in Hays, Kan., last week.
The Lady Bears took part in a tournament in Lewisville, Texas.
While the Lady Bears are hosting the Tournament of Champions next week, the Grizzlies will play in another tournament in Blue Springs, Mo.
Northside opens conference play at Bentonville West on Dec. 22 before playing its home conference opener on Jan. 3 against Springdale Har-Ber.
SOUTHSIDE
ALSO PREPPING
Southside actually plays two games before Christmas in the 6A-West.
“It’s early. I felt like depth was an issue. That’s going to get better as we get our football guys in and find out who can help us,” said Southside coach Stewart Adams. “We got a little tired in the second half. You want to win all of these games right now just like we do in conference.”
While the Lady Mavericks are competing in the Tournament of Champions, the Mavericks will take part in an invitational tournament in Carthage, Mo.
Both teams will go to Anderson, Mo., to play in the McDonald County Tournament on Dec. 12-14. The Mavericks will play at Greenwood on Dec. 13.
“We have a couple of tournaments in there with Greenwood sprinkled in,” Adams said. “With conference starting early, you don’t get that time during the Christmas break to do that final refocus period to address things. We’ve got two of them before Christmas. You’ve got to get rolling. You’ve got to use November and early December to figure things out.”
Southside travels to Bentonville West on Dec. 20 to open conference play and then plays on Dec. 22 against Bentonville in the home conference opener.
VAN BUREN
LONG ROAD TRIP
The Pointers will spend the entire month of December away from home.
“It wasn’t strictly by design,” Van Buren coach Brad Autry said. “When they changed the rule where we could add games, the only place we could add them was later in the semester.”
Van Buren opened with wins over Huntsville in a benefit game, and Subiaco Academy, Shiloh Christian, and Prairie Grove to open the season.
“The schedule will amp up,” Autry said. “We’re going to play plenty of tough opponents. We’ll get our share of battles.”
This past week, the Pointers lost at Southside and then traveled to Rogers on Friday, losing in overtime, 50-48.
Now, it’s a tournament each week of December until conference play begins in January.
Van Buren travels to Vilonia this week to play Paragould, Lamar and Vilonia on Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday, respectively.
On Dec. 15-17, they will take part in the McDonald County Tournament in Anderson, Mo.
On Dec. 20-21, the Pointers will play in the 12 Courts of Christmas at Kemper Arena in Kansas City.
“It’s a multi-court, multiteam deal,” Autry said. “They’re excited to have us. We’re the first Arkansas team to ever go up there. It will be an interesting deal. It will be a great experience to play those games.”
After the mandatory dead period around Christmas, Van Buren will travel to Neosho, Mo., for another tournament.
Van Buren opens 5A-West play at Greenbrier on Jan. 6 before finally playing at home on Jan. 10 against Greenwood.
Conference play will also be the first time that Van Buren plays a varsity doubleheader with both the Pointers and Lady Pointers unable to work out common opponents.
“We tried really hard to do that,” Autry said. “It seemed like everybody that wanted to play them didn’t want to play us or everybody that wanted to play us didn’t want to play them. We have to just fill our schedule and couldn’t get anything to work.”
ALMA
CHARLES B. DYER CLASSIC
Alma will host the Charles B. Dyer Classic, beginning on Thursday.
Alma, Greene County Tech, Shiloh Christian and Mena will play a round-robin format over the three-day period for both boys and girls teams.
The Lady Airedales defeated Beebe to open the Benton Holiday Classic on Thursday before losing to host Benton on Friday. Alma played West Memphis on Saturday to wrap up the threeday event.
The Airedales lost to host Benton and then played Jacksonville in the late game on Friday and Farmington on Saturday.