The Mooreland Holiday Classic Basketball Tournament, which concludes today, has been 14 months in the making.

Mooreland High School Principal and Athletic Director Ron Wilson said that he started the process of organizing the 3-day tournament over a year ago when he "sent out a survey to about 50 schools to see if they were interested."

"You try to get commitments from seven schools because you want to have 8 schools in the tournament including your own," he said, noting that finding schools can be a challenge since "most are already committed to two tournaments that they regularly do."

Lining up enough schools to play in the tournament was not only one of the biggest hurdles to getting the tournament going, it is also "what took the longest," Wilson said.

But eventually, Drummond, Fort Supply, Sayre, Sharon-Mutual, Timberlake, Vici and Watonga all agreed to come out to Mooreland for a holiday tournament.



IT TAKES A VILLAGE

After he had the teams to play in the tournament, Wilson said the next hurdle was finding and organizing officials to referee the games.

"I turned that over to Leland Searcy. He is one of the more experienced guys we have around here," he said, noting that he is a big believer in delegation.

"One thing I try to do a good job at is delegating things to good people," he said, "because I can't obviously do everything myself."

However, Wilson has still worn his share of hats while pulling off this tournament, from serving as the announcer calling out the starting lineups for some games to acting as a janitor and picking up trash.

"I'm also the deejay," he joked, while changing a CD to keep the crowd entertained during halftime of Friday morning's game between Sharon-Mutual's and Vici's girls teams.

But Wilson also noted that it took more people than he could name to actually take care of everything that goes into producing a successful tournament.

"There are probably 100 people in town who pitched in to help out," he said, noting that community members have volunteered to do everything from serve as gate keepers to score keepers.

More "pitched in with food items" for the tournament's hospitality suite, he said, noting that, overall, "the community has been tremendous."

"If we didn't have such a great community with people willing to pitch in, we wouldn't do this," Wilson said.

THE BENEFITS OF A MODERN FACILITY CLOSE BY

And it seems that at least the fans appreciate all their efforts.

Donna Murphy was enjoying the action as she watched her daughter Erica Halley and her Sharon-Mutual teammates play in the tournament Friday morning.

"They've got some good solid ball teams. There's some good basketball being played," she said, noting "it's good to have that close by."

Bart Watkins said he also appreciated having a tournament that was closer to home as he cheered on the Vici Indians and his niece Chesney Watkins as they played against the Trojans Friday morning.

"It's a lot better than driving (to other tournaments)," he said.

Beyond offering a venue that was closer for some area teams, Wilson said the reason he decided to organize the tournament was the opportunity for "bringing this many people to our community and showing off our facility."

Mooreland's new basketball gym, which was completed in 2007, features 1,200 "all chair-back" seats and "a state of the art $40,000 scoreboard system," he said.

"A few people have been telling us that with our new gym, we need to have a tournament," Wilson said.

After hosting regional tournaments the past two years, Wilson began to see their point. Especially as he realized that some schools would appreciate a chance at some "extra play" in the same setting where they might be playing for the regional championship later in the season.

"This gives them three more games in this gym," he said.

THE BEGINNING OF A NEW TRADITION?

With the tournament not quite half-over, Wilson said, "everything's gone very well so far."

He noted that the school has tried "to do those extra things" to "make it a first class tournament." Beyond the hospitality suite for coaches and officials, he said Mooreland has also "provided a meal to each of the players" and brought a professional photographer in to document the tournament "so parents can buy those photos."

"It's important to me that if we're going to do this, we do it right," Wilson said.

"Of course, with it being our first year, we've taken notes on what to improve on next year," he said, making it clear that despite the minor hiccups and other challenges of putting on the tournament, the school plans on making it an annual event.

In fact, Wilson said he tried to go the extra mile with this year's tournament in order to "make it the type of tournament where next year schools will say, 'yeah, we want to come back.'"

Even though he is already making plans for next year, the Mooreland principal/athletic director said there is part of him that is amazed he was able to get the tournament going this year.

"It was kind of a surreal moment yesterday (Thursday) when I realized that here was something I started 14 months ago and 'wow' it really happened," Wilson said.