Small Town Basketball

I'm lucky that I get to work with a lot of athletes, and that my company is really involved with the community.  One of the cool things is that we sometimes get tickets for things like being able to run in local races, or even courtside seats to a local basketball tournament.  The Willamette Classic is an annual high level high school basketball tournament hosted by Willamette University in downtown Salem.  They have a bunch of teams come from all over Oregon, and a few from out of state every year.  High School basketball is great.  It's just like college, where the kids love the game and play the right way, but there is a lot less parity and some individuals can just take games over.

We went and watched a couple of games, and gave our tickets to other basketball fans so that these kids could have someone cheering for them later in the week.  The games were great, the competition was fierce but fair, and I'm sure some of these great kids will be playing at the next level.  If you can support athletics at any level, it's a good thing.

It's hard to make out, but above is the shameless plug for my group, Hope Orthopedics of Oregon, with our banner hanging next to the other sponsors up there!