A CROWDED FIELD
Area coaches, ADs say New Mexico has too many tournaments scheduled, ‘teetering’ on overload
It was a phone call West Las Vegas athletic director Richard Tripp received a couple of days ago, asking him if his girls basketball team was interested in playing one game at Roswell’s Poe Corn Invitational. To him, it was a shot across the bow regarding the glut of regular-season basketball tournaments in the state.
Tripp said school officials were looking for several varsity teams to fill an empty slot in the tournament’s bracket since it couldn’t find one team looking for three games the tournament provided. Tripp said it is a practice that has become more commonplace because there are too many tournaments and not enough teams to fill them.
It’s a pattern that concerns Tripp — as well as coaches and other ADs around the state.
Could it be the state has reached the tipping point of too many tournaments?
“I think we’re teetering on it, I really do,” Tripp said. “I mean, I look at the month of December, and I call it, ‘The Month of Tournaments.’ ”
Every weekend since the start of December, there have been at least a half dozen tournaments statewide — except for this week, since it comes right as the Christmas holiday is set to begin. And the number of tournaments every year seems to increase; this year saw Española Valley and Coronado create their own tournaments.
The allure of tournaments is palpable. They allow the host teams to play three games in as many days at home, which alleviates the need to schedule single opponents to fill a 26-game schedule. The better tournaments in the state can also be great revenue generators for those schools — the Hobbs Holiday Tournament and the APS Metro Tournament are good examples — with some of them raisings tens of thousands of dollars if the field of teams is strong.
Hosting a tournament also means schools do not have to dip into already-shrinking athletic budgets to travel for away games, or to go to a tournament.
However, with so many schools looking to benefit from those events, it has created a scheduling chasm. When a tournament cannot fill its bracket, whether because of a lack of interest from other
schools or a last-minute cancellation that leaves the host in a lurch, ADs and coaches have to become creative in making the best of a bad situation.
“I think everybody has figured out they want a tournament,” said Rio Rancho Cleveland AD Matt Martinez, who created the Ben Lujàn Tournament at Pojoaque. “Sometimes, you have a tournament, and it’s watered down and you can’t enough teams to come back.”
Pojoaque Valley AD Mark Mutz faced that dilemma when Moriarty’s boys team pulled out of last weekend’s Ben Lujàn Tournament because its own Bruce King Tournament moved back a week when the New Mexico Activities Association pushed the start of the 2023-24 athletic season back a week. Mutz developed a round-robin schedule with the remaining teams instead of using Pojoaque’s junior varsity. Since games involving sub-varsity teams do not count to a varsity squad’s record when trying to qualify for the state tournament, the last thing a host school wants to do is drive schools away by making them playing those teams.
Mutz hopes that it is a onetime situation and is already trying to set up teams for the 2024 tournament. Even more important, Mutz said, is making sure teams that commit to playing in a tournament honor it. That means adding a financial penalty to tournament contracts.
“Hopefully, that will keep them from backing out of the of the tournament,” Mutz said.
Sometimes, even the best tournaments can’t avoid those dilemmas. The Ben Lujàn Tournament has dealt with that situation a few times over the past 10 years. Capital’s Al Armendariz and Santa Fe High’s Capital City tournaments have been forced to dip into the JV ranks to fill a bracket.
Timing is also a factor to these tournaments. The first few weeks of December and January see a plethora of tournaments across the state, and Mutz said he is considering moving the Ben Lujàn Tournament from that traffic jam
of early December tournaments. St. Michael’s AD Josh Grine said the Lady Horsemen Christmas Tournament has benefitted from its slot between Christmas and New Year’s because there are not a lot of other tournaments during that time.
He also has been able to get a strong contingent of strong Northern schools that make the tournament inviting. However, he added the cost of running a tournament, from purchasing food, gear and equipment every year to paying officials, and a lack of attendance can make a tournament not as luxurious financially.
“I want to say our girls tournament may have lost money last year,” Grine said.
Among the few tournaments not to face the issues that others do have been the Stu Clark, the Northern Rio Grande and Raton’s Cowbell tournaments. The NRG and the Cowbell have set teams that return yearly for the tournament. When a school leaves, those tournaments have found suitable replacements to ensure full eight-team brackets.
The tradition of the Stu Clark Tournament, which takes place just before the New Year at New Mexico Highlands University and regularly has Las Vegas Robertson and West Las Vegas in the bracket, has made filling that tournament easier.
Tripp said newer, less established tournaments have the problem of trying to make a name for themselves amid a sea of other events striving for the same prestige. He said West Las Vegas’ Brian Gallegos Memorial Tournament has focused on bringing in solid Class 3A and 2A schools so that teams face good competition.
His ultimate goal is to have a strictly 3A field that gives everybody what they want — three good games early in the season.
“The coach from Cottonwood Classical said those three days were awesome because we played three 3A schools and now we know where we stand,” Tripp said.
Grine said he hopes the number of tournaments start to shrink so that the quality improves.
“I would like to see some sort of cap on it,” Grine said. “Some tournaments are so watered down, but I honestly see it staying the way that it is.”