In the second quarter of the ASB 3v3 basketball tournament final round, Massih Solhjou (11) and his team, the Baylor Bears University, trailed 8-0. It seemed the contenders, the crowd, and the clock were all against his team. All seemed lost until he started taking shots.

    ASB hosted the 2021-2022 3v3 basketball tournament in the gym April 18-22.

       The event attracted a huge audience and gave the opportunity for students and teachers to show their basketball skills.

ASB executive member Michael Braun (11) was one of the people in charge of the event. He said that the tournament had a lot of planning but ended up being a huge success.

“It went really well and a lot of people enjoyed the event,” he said. “We used to do the 3v3 tournament a long time ago, but it’s something new to everyone that’s at Westview right now.”

Braun said that the idea was brought up by Lawrence Nguyen (11) and Calvin Winstead (11) and he wanted to get involved because the two had minimal experience with planning events.

A teachers’ team composed of Athletic Director Steve McClaughlin, math teacher Dusty Engle, and social science teacher Nic Speiss were also permitted to play.

Solhjou’s team played exceptionally well, going undefeated and making it all the way to the final round. The game was well fought. After trailing 8-0, the team came back to win 12-8.

“I definitely plan on playing again next year, and we have an open spot since one of my teammates is graduating this year,” Solhjou said. “Since we won this year, I feel like teams will come a little more prepared and ready for us next year.”

The event needed a lot of planning and communication with clubs and organizations like Dance Troupe and DJ Production club, in which both were able to provide entertainment during and in-between games.

“The booth was really sick and wasn’t a distraction,” Solhjou said. “It added some noise to the gym that might have been a little quiet if it wasn’t for the music.”

“DJ club reached out to us and we told them  we’d be down for them to DJ, which was really nice since they help us in a bunch of other events,” Braun said. “For Dance Troupe, I know that everyone enjoys watching them and they have a show coming up so we also helped publicize them.”

ASB called in experienced students who knew the ins and outs of refereeing basketball to assist in calling shots in the tournament.

“We were originally unsure of the refereeing situation because admin said that we should do team self-refereeing, which was what we were leaning towards in the beginning,” Braun said. “But then we heard players saying ‘This could spiral out of control,’ and we decided to go with referees in case anything bad happened.”

Braun also said that there were a few issues in the tournament and the biggest one entailed was communication with the teams and trying to fit all the games into a short period of time.

“Teams wouldn’t check the schedule and especially on Monday, no one knew what was going on,” he said. “But we quickly were able to find a groove. [Another] problem was definitely that there wasn’t enough time in the lunch period.”

Along with tight schedules, there was also a lack of female representation in the tournament.

“On the application, we said that it was co-ed, and we foresaw that it would be mostly guy teams but there were just no girl teams that signed up,” Braun said. “We really didn’t want to force the gender rule, like we did in the dodgeball tournament but we might revisit it next year.”

Through a player’s perspective, Solhjou said that the rules of the tournament made everything fair for both opponents.

“The max two-varsity-player rule was good because it prevented teams from becoming too dominant,” he said. “I was also happy with the winner’s ball rule and the tournament was well-organized overall.”

For this first official year of the annual tournament, Braun said that he felt 16 teams was a good number and hopes for expansion in the upcoming years.

“This year [we were] figuring everything out, like a test run: what would work and what wouldn’t,” he said. “We knew that we only had one week to use the gym, so we couldn’t make it a bigger tournament and have more teams.”

Braun has high hopes for the tournament to continue on for years to come and become another Westview traditional event.

“If possible we also were thinking of doing it in March to tie in with March Madness, but this year there just wasn’t any available time [in March],” Braun said. “It could be a 5v5 or a 3v3. But next year, for sure, there’s going to be a basketball tournament and it will be a tradition going forward.”