Not this year…

KELLOGG — The summer that never was…

The COVID-19 pandemic claimed its second largest event victim of the summer this past week as the decision was made to cancel the annual Silver Hoops 3-on-3 Basketball Tournament this summer.

The Silver Hoops Organization Committee labored over the decision for some time, holding several last minute meetings in efforts to figure out ways to keep the second biggest event in the Silver Valley alive.

Three weeks ago the event was very much alive and well as the number of positive COVID cases was trending downward and local communities were reopening and starting to feel “normal” again, but then those numbers changed dramatically for the worse.

There were also concerns surrounding the amount of people who flock to the Kellogg area from places like Kootenai County and Eastern Washington.

The tournament is one of the larger 3-on-3 events in the area, although still dwarfed by Spokane’s Hoopfest, Kellogg’s 30-year-old tournament brings in an average of 400 players per year, but was coming off the most well-attended tournament in the event’s history in 2019 where there were well over 500.

Each of those players usually has at least one person tagging along with them, which puts the attendance for the event well over the 1,000 mark.

The committee had dedicated their efforts to truly making the 2020 tournament as safe and healthy as possible by coming up with some fairly strict rules, coordinating with health officials, and other smaller regional tournaments to see what they were doing to combat COVID restrictions.

“We had discussions with a lot of other tournaments and safety officials over the last month to develop an extensive safety guideline for the event,” said Nathan Wendt, Silver Hoops committee chair and longtime organizer. “If cases were trending in the right direction, we could have played this year. However, with the rising number of cases in our region, and in particular the 18-29 age group, the right thing to do this year is cancel for everyone’s safety.”

Discussion to push the event back into August was also tossed around, but with August getting more and more crowded due to other events postponing (like Hoopfest), as well as the hopeful beginning of high school fall sports, the continued uncertainty about how the pandemic is progressing were factors in deciding to cancel it until next year.

The event is one of the Silver Valley Chamber of Commerce’s biggest fundraisers, but it also has raised more than $300,000 for local nonprofits in the Silver Valley while bringing competitors and spectators from all over the Northwest.