The District 9 basketball championships came to a close Saturday with six games – five of them championship games – at PennWest Clarion’s Tippin Gym.
It was a glorious day of basketball in District 9 with four of the six games being highly competitive contests.
And they ran on time.
Often times we find reasons to complain about what the PIAA or the district committees of the PIAA do or don’t do. We all believe we could do better.
Not this time.
First-year District 9 basketball chairman Dave Osborne pulled off a heck of a day of basketball. Really a heck of a tournament.
Osborne’s leadership with the help and the rest of his basketball committee was suburb.
The decision to play games two hours apart instead of an hour and a half was perfect.
With five post-game award ceremonies, including four with another game still to be played, meant that the two-hour window was the exact right amount of time to have inbetween games.
It gave fans an opportunity to go to the concession stand or the bathroom inbetween games, and it gave the media – and I know most of you don’t care about us – ample time to do interviews with the players and coaches of the previous game without feeling rushed.
Even when small things came up, Osborne and company did their best to make sure things got taken care of.
Was it perfect? No, nothing that caliber, that size, with that many moving parts ever is. But for the size of the event, not much more could be asked.
For that, I say kudos to all those who spent the time and effort to plan Super Saturday, and here is hoping that Super Saturday is here for good. We found out that in these (almost) post-pandemic times it can still be a great event.
