BIGTIME EVENTS ARE FILLING UP
Our BigTime Youth Tournaments and BigTime Youth Shootout Camps in Oklahoma City, Tulsa, Stillwater, Dallas and Wichita regions are rapidly reaching capacity and we'd love to have you at any of our events throughout the year. Of course ours are less expensive than than other events and all are held in state-of-the-art facilities. Also talk youth basketball and ask questions and comment on the BigTime Youth Bulletin Board and check out our Boys & Girls Hall of Fame.

WHERE ARE THEY NOW? - GRIFFIN, HENRY, ORTON, CLARKE, PAGE, TUCKER & HOLDMAN
In the most recent of our "Where are they now" features, we are looking at players who've come through our tournaments who are now playing basketball at the college level (or higher), and those that soon will be...Teams like the Oklahoma Bearcats and Oklahoma Hoosiers, who had players like Keiton Page with the Oklahoma State Cowboys, Rotnei Clarke with the Arkansas Razorbacks, Daniel Orton with the Kentucky Wildcats., Konner Tucker with the Wake Forest Demon Deacons and Ken Holdman with the Oral Roberts Golden Eagles. Of course Athlete's First won several of tournaments with some of those guys, as well as Blake Griffin (with the Oklahoma Sooners and the NBA's top pick in 2009 draft) and Xavier Henry (currently with the Kansas Jayhawks, but likely a top NBA pick in 2010). If you have a team photo from one of our events in the past that has college players on it please send it to greg@gregswaim.com with the entire list of players.

BEFORE THEY WERE STARS - SHELDEN WILLIAMS
In the first of our "Before They Were Stars" feature, we let you know a little about Shelden Williams (pictured at left wearing his "Greg Swaim Basketball shirt and at right with the Sacremento Kings) who played at Duke and now is playing in the NBA. I still remember the call I got one day from Shelden's father Bob, who asked me if his 7th grade son would be able to play in the high school division at one of our exposure camps? Having never seen or heard of Shelden, Bob assured me that he was "pretty good" and was already 6'6 and had been practicing already with the varsity team. We allowed Shelden to play in the higher division and could see in the first few minutes that he was more than ready to compete at that level. Within days we sent a report on Shelden to the over 300 schools who take our recruiting service and to no surprise many of the top college programs in the country called back wanting to know where they could go watch him play? Needless to say, within a few months Shelden was ranked near the top of his class nationally and within a few years every major college in the country had made him a scholarship offer. In 2004 I ran into Shelden and his family at the Final Four in San Antonio, as he Duke was preparing to play the next day, and it was great to see what a terrific young many he'd become. P.S. Shelden may be the only guy in the NBA who's girlfriend (Candace Parker) is more famous that he is.

  HEAT TEAMS TAKE THE CHAMPIONSHIP IN TULSA
Both of the Tulsa Heat teams made it to the finals in Tulsa over the weekend and no doubt we'll be seeing these kids and mentioning some of their names over the next half dozen years in our college recruiting service. Both teams made their way to the championships, with the Red team winning and the White team taking the consolation. Team members pictured at right (from left to right) are (front row) Bradly Gleason, Shawn Olden, Brandon Jero, Matt Barksdale, Bain Wannemacher, Tyler Haistings and Nick Hudson, (back row) are Tanner Brown, Dillon Guffey, Coach Grant Johnson, Coach BJ Vogt, Chris Hull, Ben Kramer. We look forward to having both of these teams in future BigTime events.

WILDBEARS CAPTURE THE TITLE
The Wild Bears out of north central Oklahoma (pictured at left) recently won first place in the 3-4th grade division of the BigTime Tournament in OKC, winning both of their pool games to capture the top seed and then on Sunday won all three tournament games, beating out the Fort Cobb Tropics in the championship game. The Wild Bears are (l-r back row) Nathan Brock (Pawnee), Jordan Brown (Stillwater), Gideon Gardner (Pawnee), Tristan Garringer (Morrison), Blake Womack (Pawnee), and (l-r front row) Anthony Leas (Pawnee), Will Lalman (Morrison) and Hadley Jensen (Pawnee).

 RINGWOOD TAKES THE TROPHY
Ringwood (pictured at right) won their first ever BigTime Tournament in exciting fashion, with a thrilling win over Pond Creek in the championship of the 3-4th grade division in a recent tournament in Enid. The squad came to a number of our tournaments last year and were just learning the ropes under head coach James Broomfield. Apparently they learned a lot and it showed as they came back this year and now are one of the teams to beat in that age group. Other 3-4th grade boys teams that think they have what it takes will get their chance to compete against Ringwood at our summer tournaments, as they'll be at a number of our events this year.

EAGLES WIN
A lot of teams that come to our BigTime Tournaments take a couple of tries to win a championship, so it's pretty amazing when a team does it on their first try. It's more amazing still when many of the players on the team are among the youngest in the tournament. Such was the case with the Oklahoma Eagles (pictured at left) who are comprised of a number of second graders, many playing in their first competitive event, as they won the 3-4th grade boys division at our Mulhall-Orlando tournament. The Eagles, who are coached by Larry Jenkins, are (Bottom row left to right) Vaughn Raney, Jonathan Josell, Luke Jenkins, Omar Boone, Terrence Gaines. Top row left to right. Connor Johnson, Terry Wilson, JaKoby Long, Tre Evans and Brian Lennox. Coach Jenkins tells us that the Eagles plan to defend their title over the next few weekends.