No Tournament of Champions, but there will be a ‘Battle of the Boroughs’

Four-team Catasauqua-North Catasauqua tournament begins Thursday night

Catasauqua boys basketball coach and summer league tournament director Eric Snyder never thought the Tournament of Champions event he created for area adult men’s basketball league champs at the end of summer would last for 30 years.

But it did, and just as abruptly the TOC has ended, at least for now.

With just three area leagues going on — Bangor, Catasauqua, and North Catasauqua — there were not enough champs to have a TOC this summer, so Snyder has come up with something different, and smaller, to take its place.

It’s called the “Battle of the Boroughs” and it will be a four-team tournament featuring the regular season and playoff champions from both the Catty and North Catty adult leagues.

There will be two one-game playoffs on Thursday night at North Catty at 6:30 and 7:30.

In the first game, Pammer Chiropractic, the North Catty seasonal champ, will face the Nites, the Catasauqua playoff champs. In the second game, Ohlson Landscaping, the Catty regular-season champ, will play Curmaci Dental, the North Catty playoff champ.

Those two winners will then face off in a best-of-three series starting Monday night at the Catasauqua Playground.

“We talked about doing something like this in the 1980s before we started the Tournament of Champions,” Snyder said. “If you remember in Major League Baseball before there was interleague play, the Mets and Yankees would get together for one game each year and it was called the Mayor’s Trophy game. That’s the same idea here.”

Snyder acknowledged that it could be two teams from the same league competing in the championship series, but he’s planning on getting a perpetual trophy where the name of the champion each year is listed.

“We’ll see if we can get the trophy into the borough hall of the borough that has the winning team from its league,” Snyder said. “We hope to have the two mayors involved, Bill Molchany from North Catty, and Barb Schlegel from Catty. We’re hoping to create some community interest.”

Snyder said the TOC could come back if other leagues re-emerge.

“For now, this event takes the place of the TOC and it provides some closure for the summer,” Snyder said. “It’s a nice community event. It’s not going to draw the crowds from different areas the way the TOC always did. That’s why we didn’t have the teams from the same league playing each other on the first night because they just played each other. We also won’t have TV coverage because we don’t know what night it’s going to end. It could end Tuesday or it could end Wednesday.”

Snyder said the four teams involved are all talented teams loaded with recognizable standout players such as current high school coaches Darnell Braswell, Ray Barbosa and Eddie Ohlson. Former Central Catholic standouts Carlos Pujols and Gabe Lewullis are involved as well as Andrew Kohler, Eddie Lapinski, Paul Pammer, Jihad Thorne, Renier Riddick and many more.

“Eventually, maybe, we’ll go back to the TOC, but this is something we’re going to try and at a minimum it will be a nice showcase for both playgrounds because they are both really nice venues,” Snyder said.

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