He’s grown accustomed to it by now, but any ordinary person would cringe at the thought of spending their holiday break picking up trash as the clock approached midnight. But there was Mount Vernon High School director of student activities, Bernie Forte, bent over last week helping school staff clean up after day two of the 34th annual Mount Vernon Holiday Invitational Basketball Tournament.
Now in his 20th year as DSA at Mount Vernon, Forte has gotten used to both the menial and complex jobs associated with hosting holiday tournaments. Nearly every team in the Northern region attends one over the break, but very few have an idea of just how much more besides basketball goes into pulling them off.
“It’s a good opportunity for our team and the other teams to see a good cross section of competition, but the drawback is you spend a lot of hours in the building,” said Forte, who worked about 45 hours during the three-day slate of games.
<b>THE DAY BEGINS</b> for Forte at around 9 a.m. Although the first games won’t begin until 3 p.m., there is much to do before a single player takes the court.
“You’ve got to make sure the floor is set and all the ticket information is together and the locker rooms are clean,” said Forte as he went through his mental checklist. “You got to make sure there are keys for every room. We have a hospitality room also, so that needs to be ready. You can’t forget about getting all the brackets updated and making sure we have the teams in the proper locker room. Also sending emails out to the press with scores.”
Another important factor is lining up all the volunteers necessary to have the tournament run smoothly. Forte estimated he had 25 people working jobs ranging from a ticket taker to someone working the scoreboard during the games. Everything must be manned at all times.
But all that doesn’t even account for the pre-tournament work Forte had to put in getting sponsors to help with the cost, making sure the concession stands are stocked, and lining up teams to attend.
Forte is used to all this since Mount Vernon has such a large gym. The school is a frequent site for larger tournaments in many sports besides basketball. The National District basketball tournaments are usually held there, as well as last year’s Northern Region wrestling tournament.
Still, though, Forte admitted that this year’s tournament was not the moneymaker that it has been in the past. He said the school would likely break even on its investment, rather than pull the small profit it usually does, which would have gone directly back to Mount Vernon’s basketball program.
Part of the problem was that Mount Vernon was the only Virginia team to make it out of the first round, meaning the other four were relegated to the consolation bracket games that take place in the afternoon when crowds tend to be sparse.
Forte also thought not having Richmond Highway rival West Potomac on the bracket didn’t help. The Wolverines usually come to Mount Vernon over the Holiday break, but coach David Houston III decided to take his team to a tournament in Maryland this year.
<b>PERHAPS THE MOST</b> important aspect of throwing a successful tournament is getting the right mix of teams, according to Forte. This year’s Mount Vernon Holiday Invitational included schools from the Northern Virginia (Yorktown, Fairfax, Mount Vernon, Hayfield and Marshall), Maryland (Wise High School of Prince George’s County), Washington, D.C. (McKinley Tech) and even California (Eastlake High School out of San Diego).
From there, it’s all about getting the types of matchups that develop. For instance, a team like Eastlake just isn’t going to bring in a large crowd because the only people with the team are generally the parents of players on the team. Also, the teams from Virginia already play each other much of the year to begin with. For that reason, Forte separated the five schools into two sides of the bracket.
Every tournament director has dreams of a final that is not only entertaining, but also attracts a large crowd.
“Trying to get the teams matched up as evenly as possible can sometimes be difficult,” said Forte. “You want them to funnel into a nice championship, which happened (this year).”
<b>THIS YEAR’S FINAL</b> pitted host Mount Vernon against Wise, a powerhouse from Prince George’s County. It was an ideal match-up for Forte, with the host school Majors going against a ranked opponent that had plenty of fan support itself.
That the game was a barnburner that saw Mount Vernon rally from a fourth-quarter deficit to win its own tournament title, 76-71, thanks to some timely 3-pointers from junior Skylar Jones was just icing on the cake.
“I love playing in tournaments because we play against good teams,” said senior Robert Colemna, named the tournament’s Most Valuable Player. “To see where your team is at, you have to play good teams.”
Somewhere in the background Forte had to be smiling, even with a final round of trash duty looming.