Liberty Tourney - Great Homeschool Basketball!

We just spent 4 days up in Lynchburg, VA at Liberty University, the site of the 2009 HSPN East Coast Homeschool Basketball Championships.

This is the 3rd year the Lighthouse varsity teams have competed in this tournament, which included 52 homeschool middle school, JV, and Varsity teams from VA, NC, SC, GA, TN, NY, MD, and TX. The teams were divided into pools of 4 teams, who played against each other the first two days. Then the teams were remixed, and grouped with others of similar ability for the final 2 games, to decide the champions of each bracket. Most games were played on the six courts at Liberty U's LaHaye Recreation Center. There is a LOT of energy and a LOT of noise when 5 or 6 basketball games are being played simultaneously on adjacent courts!!


The high school gym at Liberty Christian Academy, which sits right next door to the University, was the venue for one of our varsity girls' games, and the boys got to play their final game at Liberty's Vine Center stadium. They loved that!

Part of the fun was a 3-point contest for various age groups, and Jason won 1st place in the Under 11 category, with six 3-pointers in 60 seconds.




Things were pretty busy since Mark was coaching and Amanda was scorekeeper for the Varsity Boys team and Amanda was playing with the Varsity Girls, so we were hopping from court to court from morning til night.


But it was a lot of fun for the kids to stay together at the hotel, go out to eat, and just hang out for a few days.



The Lighthouse Eagles Varsity Girls won their first 3 games and ended up in the top bracket, finishing 4th out of the 14 girls teams at the tournament. The Eagles Varsity Boys struggled in their early games against some strong teams and ended up in the bottom bracket, but they pulled through and won their last 2 games to take home a pretty nice trophy!