This Friday marks the third annual 3-on-3 Basketball Tournament hosted by the women’s basketball team. The brainchild of Kate Gluckman, coach of the women’s basketball team, this year’s tournament is being organized by Jessica Vaverka ’11.
Apart from being a member of the women’s basketball team, Vaverka is contributing her time to organizing this athletic event in order to complete a course requirement for one of her classes, Organization and Administration of Athletics.

Interested parties were asked to form teams consisting of any number of players while keeping in mind that only three people could play at any one given time. The entry fee for each team was 20 dollars, the cumulative amount going either to a charity as it has been done in years past or contributing to the women’s basketball team budget. The winning team will receive a gift certificate to Dari Barn.

All members of the women’s basketball team were strongly encouraged to participate in the tournament, but in order to create a level playing field for all participants, each team was asked to limit themselves to a maximum of one player from the men’s and women’s basketball teams.

Open to the whole campus, the tournament was advertised through posters and word was also spread via e-mail. “This year actually I’ve had some interest from faculty and staff,” Vaverka said. “Professor [Paul] Lacson has put together a team as well as Coach Gluckman, [so] hopefully there will be a lot of people outside the athletic pool.”

The games kick-off around 6:30 p.m., with six courts in play at once—four in the main gym and two in the auxiliary gym. Each game is restricted to one half of the court, where regular two-pointers are worth one point and three-pointers are worth two. Teams play for a maximum of 20 minutes, or to 11 points, and must win by two. The first round will be a loose double elimination that will either progress to a round robin or go straight to brackets.

“People sit around [and] hang out,” Vaverka said. “It gets competitive towards the end, just because a lot of people are athletes and are obviously competitive by nature.”
Teams seemed to be enthusiastic about their preparations for the tournament. “One of the teams did name [themselves] The Bone Crushers,” Vaverka said. “Our team will probably try to have some matching uniforms,” added Mallory Scharf ’11. Scharf is a member of the women’s basketball team taking part in this tournament with Hilary Brown ’11 and Sam Forman ’11.

When asked to place bets on teams that were likely to win, Scharf replied, “I don’t think my team’s going to win, we’re going to have fun.” Brown, her teammate, didn’t share the same sentiments.

“I channel Derek Fisher when I play, so of course our team will dominate,” Brown said. “Just like the Lakers dominate the NBA.”

Despite the varying degrees of competitiveness between the participants, the over-arching theme of camaraderie was put forth by Scharf. “[The tournament] includes a diverse group of people,” she said. “Including non-athletes, and [gets] them involved in a sport they used to love and play a lot.”