Recap of the 8th Annual Holiday Tournment
The 8th Annual Holiday Tournament was held on December 8-9, 2012 at the University of Illinois in Champaign. Traditionally, we have held this event in Northwest Indiana. But after visiting the campus of the University of Illinois, we wanted every team to experience the university’s beautiful scenery and state of the art facility.
The holiday event was a thrill from the beginning to the end. We had some extremely talented players that represented their programs very well. The Illinois Speed program walked away with 1 gold and 2 silver winners. The newcomers that capture the number #1 spots were the Iowa Barnstormers, Hoops4Health, Illinois Wildcats, St. Louis MDHoops, Gym Rats and LBC. Hoops4Health really stood out by beating their
opponents between 65-20 points, yikes!
The Holiday Event was a trill from the beginning to the end. We had some extremely talented players that represented their programs very well. The Illinois Speed program walked away with 1 gold and 2 silver winners. The newcomers that capture the number 1# spots were the Iowa Barnstormers, Hoops4Health, Illinois Wildcats, St. Louis MD Hoops, Gym Rats and LBC. Hoops4Health really stood out by beating their opponents between 65-20 points, yikes!
The runner ups that made their presents known were the CU All Stars,Wisconsin Playground Elite, Lafayette Bluechip, Illinois Speed, LBC and Iowa Showtime. These were very competitive teams that fought down to the end.
The Battle Cats came in and defended their title of winning the holiday tournament two years in the row. The Battle Cats are an aggressive, energetic, and
a well skilled young team. They captured the 4th & 5th grade championships. The ironic part is that both teams blew past the teams in pool and semi finals by 20 or more points.
We had many excellent programs that were eliminated by 1 to 2 point games or earlier in the semi-finals (Peoria Soldiers, Steger, Danville Elite, DV Hoopstars, Effinghman, Perkin Union and Peoria Elite) that I know will be back at our Battle of the Borders to go for the gold. We will have elite programs from Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin, Arizona, Iowa, Georgia, Kentucky, Michigan, Ohio, and Tennessee only to name a few states that will be in attendance on March 2.
Thanks for your support!