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| History |
Each March, as the "Road to the NCAA Final
Four" veers to a distant city, New York State's
best high school basketball teams set off on a more
familiar, down home path - "The Road to Glens
Falls."
When high school basketball players go into the gym
in November, the one city in the state on their
minds is Glens
Falls. "If we practice and play hard as a
team we'll make it to Glens Falls for the State
Championships!"
Twenty thousand players, coaches, parents and fans
jam the city - more than doubling Glens Falls'
population - during tournament weekend. At the same
time, in Troy, N.Y. at Hudson Valley Community
College, New York State's top girls high school
teams compete in their state tournament.
Glens Falls, a quaint, 150-year old city crouched on
the Hudson River 50 miles north of Albany, once was
best known for its paper makers and insurance
companies. It gained national prominence in the
mid-1940's when the old Look magazine crowned
it "Hometown USA." At the time, the city
hosted the annual Eastern States Basketball Tourney,
one of the earliest high school tournaments in the
country, started in 1920 and drawing thousands of
fans from around the Northeast. Now, in addition to
the high school basketball tournaments, Glens Falls'
Civic Center is home to the Adirondack Frostbite of
the United Hockey League.
So how come basketball - the "big city
game" - has found such a comfortable home in
little Glens Falls, population 17,000?
"It's the overall atmosphere," said
William Higgins, chairman of the state wide Boys
Basketball Committee, which has awarded Glens Falls
the tournament contract through 2008. "Glens
Falls is a safe, friendly community with convenient,
affordable accommodations. It's centrally located,
and they have a tremendous group of volunteers who
see to it that everything goes off like clockwork.
It's a very positive environment."
Many of the biggest names in college basketball and
the NBA first earned state wide acclaim for their
hardwood feats in Glens Falls. And the city is proud
to serve as New York's unofficial basketball
capital. City officials and business leaders have
worked hard to keep the tournament in town.
"We think a high school tournament and Glens
Falls are a natural match," said former Glens
Falls Mayor Francis X. O'Keefe. "From the local
basketball coaches and officials to the business
owners, professional people, students and retirees,
we have people of all ages who really get involved
in this. It's a community project. It takes team
work just like it does to win a state
championship."
Again this year volunteers from the Chamber's Sports
Promotion Committee will run an information booth at
the Civic
Center, distributing information on local
restaurants, stores and cultural attractions to the
more than 20,000 visitors expected for the two
weekends of the tourney.
New York had been without a high school tournament
for more than 40 years before the idea was
resurrected in Rochester in the late '70's, said
Doug Kenyon, who is the Boys Basketball Tournament
Director
In 1981, veteran Glens Falls High Athletic Director
Bernard "Putt" LaMay, a former NYSPHSAA
president and then the director of the Federation
Championships, led Glens Falls' bid for and received
its first state tournament. Glens Falls has been
awarded the three-year contracts ever since.
"To say that we are treated well by the City of
Glens Falls is the understatement of the year,"
said Higgins. "We have heard nothing but
positive comments from all the participants. Glens
Falls simply knows how to run a tournament and run
it well."
For kids from the inner city who have never been to
a small town or kids who come from small communities
who think Glens Falls is the big city, the whole
city welcomes them with the hospitality that Glens
Falls has displayed from all the way back to the
1920's. People from all over the state can identify
Glens Falls - the home of the State
High School Basketball Championships.
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