HUERTER’S HOOPFEST
CLIFTON PARK, NY » On Friday night the Huerter family was knee-deep in preparations for Saturday morning’s 518 HoopFest, including the blowing up of 150 basketballs.
The event, which initially attracted nearly 500 registrants from around the Capital Region, took place on September 4 at the Clifton Common basketball courts for young players ages 6 to 17.
“Getting to see all the support,” Huerter said of the most memorable part of the day for him. “There’s a lot of different people who I haven’t seen in a long time from different parts of my life. To be able to come out here, see the support, having 500 people sign up and having to limit it to 120 people and eventually 150, the turnout was awesome to see.”
“Last night, from about 5:30 unlit maybe 1 am, we were still doing the finishing touches on pretty much everything,” said Tom Huerter, Kevin’s father. “Whether it was blowing up 150 basketballs or making sure we had the volunteers and the DJ. There was a lot that went into it, but it was fun. Thomas, my wife Erin, our daughter
Jillian, Thomas’ girlfriend Jackie, Kevin’s girlfriend Elsa, they were all here and integral in pulling this off. It was something that our family was proud to organize, but we had a lot of help.”
Huerter, a guard for the Atlanta Hawks and 2016 graduate of Shenendehowa High School, announced the Labor Day weekend event on August 11 on Twitter, free to the entire 518 community.
While the number of participants was cut down from the 500 who registered to 150 on-court participants, nobody was turned away from simply showing up and taking part in some of the other experiences, such as autograph signings. Everyone registered for the event by 11:59 p.m. on September 2 was entered into a lottery. On-court participants were selected at random and notified by email on Friday.
“Today kind of re-affirms what we’ve been telling Kevin, that he has a great deal of support all over this community. Not just in Saratoga County, but all over the Capital District,” Tom said. “To have this type of turnout for this type of event was great and we’re obviously very proud of him and we’re proud to be from Clifton Park. He grew up here, so he wanted to put on an event to give back and I think he accomplished that.”
This is something that the Huerter’s now plan on hosting every year.
“We plan to do this every year and the first one couldn’t have gone any better,” Tom added.
For most of the morning, participants were divided by age group and worked in stations. As they rotated to different hoops, they got to work with different coaches, with Huerter floating between several of the stations and interacting with the kids as they approached.
While checking in, all of the participants were provided with a free tee-shirt. There were several other giveaways as the day went on, including prizes for participating in a dance contest.
The kids would go on to take home their tee-shirts, a basketball, a ball pump and a draw-string bag, along with any other prizes they were able to collect.
“The Hawks really hooked us up. They do a lot of community involvement and help the players out any way that they can and most of this came from them,” Kevin explained on how he was able to give away so much gear, while also crediting the near 30 volunteers. “This is a free event, so all these volunteers here worked for free today. All the campers here were great, it was a great event being able to get back and hopefully everybody had a lot of fun.”
“This morning was a lot of fun, the turnout that we got, a lot of kids ready to come in here and have a good time. The weather held up great for us, we thought it was a really good event, we had a lot of really good energy and gave away a bunch of stuff.”
One of those volunteer coaches was one of Kevin’s two sisters, Jillian.
“It was really cool seeing everyone come out and get together, seeing all the support for Kevin,” she said. “When we said we were looking for volunteers, we really didn’t have to beg anyone, a lot of people just volunteered to help and it was really cool to see so many people willing to spend their Saturday out here with us at the Park Commons.”
“There were a lot of his teammates from Maryland who drove in, flew in, just for this weekend and that was awesome,” Jillian added. “His former teammates, friends from Shen, they were helping with a lot of the prep stuff to get ready. He’s had a lot of help and it’s been great to see.”
The one member of the family who wasn’t able to be at the event was Meghan Huerter, who is beginning her freshman year at Providence College.
“It’s really bitter-sweet. We definitely wish she was home this weekend, but I’m glad she’s enjoying Providence and having a good time there,” Jillian said.
Someone who was able to make the trip to help volunteer as a coach was Saratoga’s Lauren Patnode, an AAU teammate of Jillian’s.
“I wasn’t supposed to be home this weekend, but when they texted me that they were doing this, I had to come home for this, so I drove home last night and I go back tomorrow,” Patnode said. “It was great having everyone here, in support of a local player who everyone knows. We had so many volunteers willing to jump right in and help.”
The event ended with even more giveaways, as well as a question and answer session for the kids to ask Huerter things that were on their mind, as well as autographs.
Participants got some insight into his experience in the 2021 playoffs, learned about his jersey swap with Dwayne Wade and that the toughest player he’s had to guard is Kevin Durant, who gave him his ‘welcome to the league’ moment. For the best moment of his entire career, he went back and forth with the night he was drafted and last season’s playoff run. His top three favorite basketball players of all time are Dwayne Wade and Allan Iverson, who each wore number 3 like Huerter, and LeBron James, who he referred to as the GOAT.
“I started thinking about it a little bit in college,” Huerter said to a question on when he started thinking about making it to the NBA. “It was one of those things where I feel like I never stepped on a court where I wasn’t one of the better players. Every level that I kept doing that, the NBA seemed like it was the next progression.”
“It was his idea,” Tom said of Kevin doing a question and answer session. “He’s been to camps, he’s helped at camps where he’s seen the different types of activities that we had today. There was a lot of collaboration of, what would the kids enjoy and what would they want to see out of him. So the Q and A, and I just said to him, I think the kids had as much fun asking you questions as they did playing on the court. It was just a fun day and and it allowed the kids to have some access to someone who’s not just in the NBA, but grew up in their backyard.”
“He was just like these kids. He would have been at this event if it was 10-15 years earlier.”