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.

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| Oklahoma Bearcats
with Sean Morgan (Northern Oklahoma JC)), Sean Swaim (Garber senior), Cale Jackson (Bethel
senior), Seth Swaim (Garber freshman), Daniel Orton (Kentucky freshman), Drew Chestnutt
(NEO JC freshman), Cale Elam (Oktaha senior) and Joel Cranmer (OCU
freshman). |
Oklahoma Hoosiers
with Rotnei Clarke (Arkansas), Konner Tucker (Wake Forest), Keiton Page (Oklahoma
State), Seth Barrett, Isaac Shultz, Mitch Rolls, Vince Boncaldo (Oklahoma
State), Adam Hollon (Northern OK JC-Enid) and Ken Holdman (Oral Roberts). |
BEFORE
THEY WERE STARS - SHELDEN WILLIAMS
In t he 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. |