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Macker tourney hopes to expand
By Greg Gulas
YOUNGSTOWN
With this year’s Gus Macker tourney a memory, plans are already in the works to make next year’s event at the Covelli Centre bigger and better.
The challenge is to increase the number of teams and overall participants.
Spreading it out over two days would suit Eric Ryan, executive director of the Covelli Centre, just fine.
Finding a corporate sponsor or several backers would please Dolph Carroll, basketball coach/athletic director at Youngstown Christian School and one of the executive board members of the fund-raising event.
“When Dolph [Carroll] came to me in March of 2009 with the idea of the Covelli Centre hosting the event, I loved the idea,” Ryan said. “But we had to throw everything together rather quickly, still ending up with 60 teams that wanted to compete.
“We had more time this past year to put the event together and it really paid off because we not only increased the number of teams to 105, but nearly doubled the number of participants as well,” Ryan said.
Wounded Warriors and the Family Readiness were beneficiaries of a portion of the proceeds.
“This was a nationally known event for the entire community to enjoy,” Carroll said. “It was fun to watch, was played at a great venue and with over 500 total games played, everyone had a great cross-section of games from which they could choose to view at any given time of the day.”
The original Gus Macker 3-on-3 Tournament was founded in 1974 by Scott McNeal on his parents’ driveway in Lowell, Mich.
The tourney continued to grow and by 1987, moved from Lowell to Belding, Mich., and because of the tremendous interest and demand from neighboring communities, then took to the road.
Over the past 23 years, the “Gus Macker All-World Tour” has entertained more than 1.7 million fans with more than 200,000 players competing in approximately 75 cities across the USA.
The tourney has six guiding principles, which include being a wholesome, family-oriented event; a tournament designed by players for players; a value to sponsors; an outstanding fund-raising event for the local community; and a major media sporting event while remaining entertaining for the spectators.
The local tournament comes at a time that is ideal for Ryan as he seeks events for the Covelli Centre during the summer.
“To be competitive in the summer months, you have to explore more outside programming,” Ryan said. “We did the rib burn-off last year and the Gus Macker tourney the past two years and I really want to keep bringing those programs back.
“We have three outdoor concerts scheduled for this week with Saving Able [today], Rick Springfield [Friday] and hip-hop artist Wiz Khalifa [Saturday],” Ryan said.
“We’re proud to team with Youngstown Christian School to bring the event to the Mahoning Valley because anyone from eight to 60 years of age can compete and have fun at the same time.”
The one thing that Carroll and his committee want to accomplish over the next few weeks will be a complete evaluation of the entire event.
“We will take a long, hard look the entire tournament,” Carroll said. “We’ll see what was done right, what we can tweak to make better and re-evaluate all areas to make year number three even better.”