photo by: Mike Yoder

Lawrence has landed The Hardwood Classic AAU basketball tournament, which runs through Sunday at the Sports Pavilion Lawrence. In the past the event has been held in Kansas City. This weekend’s event brings close to 300 teams and supporters to the community.

Since Thursday, 4,000 to 5,000 people each day have streamed through Sports Pavilion Lawrence for a basketball tournament that once belonged in Overland Park.

Organizers of the Hardwood Classic decided this year to relocate the tournament to Lawrence after five years in Overland Park — a move that was “facility based,” said Drew Molitoris, one of the tournament directors. Molitoris is also the program adviser for the MOKAN youth sports organization in Kansas City.

“The sports pavilion out here, in terms of a basketball venue, this is as good as it gets,” Molitoris said. “The response we’ve had, people are blown away when they walk in.”

The tournament, comprising 300 teams of youths ages 9 to 17 — some of them Division I prospects — is using all eight courts at a time inside Sports Pavilion Lawrence, as well as courts in at Lawrence High School, Free State High School, South Middle School and the Kansas University Ambler Student Recreation Center.

“It’s great from a fan perspective, because there’s enough seating,” Molitoris said. “It’s great from a coach’s perspective — they don’t have to worry about going different gyms. It’s great from a college coach’s perspective, because they can watch one of their future prospects and move 10 feet over and watch another.”

Teams from 17 different states have come to Lawrence, and Chad Tower, manager of Sports Pavilion Lawrence, said “almost every hotel room” in Lawrence has been booked for the tournament for the past four days.

On Thursday, some of those in town for the tournament went to the Downtown Lawrence Sidewalk Sale, Tower said, and on Saturday others checked out James Naismith’s original rules of ‘Basket Ball’ at the DeBruce Center.

Since the 181,000-square-foot Sports Pavilion opened in 2014, Tower and others in Lawrence’s Parks and Recreation department have been working to land major tournaments there, on top of daily users, and bring visitors and sales tax dollars to the city. Tower said 35 tournaments have been booked in 2016.

As of June, approximately 30,500 people had been assigned key cards to Sports Pavilion Lawrence, and the average monthly attendance was 57,247.

“We’d like to book tournaments every weekend, if we could,” Tower said. “Local tournaments, regional — we try to throw our hat in the ring. The more events you have, the more people you have come out here from different areas. It’s eye-opening to a lot of people. They can’t believe the setup we have out here.”

The tournament included an NCAA seminar and slam dunk and three-point contests Saturday night at Free State High School. The Hardwood Classic continues Sunday with games starting at 8 a.m. and finishing around 3:30 p.m.