Hundreds of students play for sportsmanship during LHS Basketball Shootout
By Garrett Christensen on Wednesday, January 15th, 2025 in More Top Stories Northeastern Oregon News
LA GRANDE – School athletics is popular for a reason. Not only does it offer an opportunity for youth to stay active, but can also serve as an essential teaching tool for teamwork, leadership, and sportsmanship. Beyond the schools themselves, sporting events can be a great way to bring people together, particularly in smaller communities. The La Grande High School’s recent Pepsi/Subway Shootout Basketball Tournament is a prime example of what sports can do for both students and the community alike.
Hosted this past weekend, January 11-12, the Pepsi/Subway Shootout is an annual basketball tournament organized by the La Grande High School to raise money for the school’s baseball program, with funds from registration and concessions helping cover major expenses such as equipment. This most recent tournament brought in 54 teams and around 540 students from across the Northwest, even as far as Seattle.
With a tournament this big, no less than 8 different floors were running Saturday alone, including two at EOU’s Quin Colosseum, one at Central Elementary School, one at the old Willo Elementary School (currently the district administrative office), the La Grande Middle School’s main gym, and 3 floors at the Wildcat Center. Two floors were also utilized at the La Grande High School on Sunday. In total 120 games were played over the course of two days.
The Shootout was originally organized over 13 years ago by Angie Malone and Mark Lanman, with La Grande High School Baseball Coach Parker McKinley taking over from Mark around 12 years ago. Barring one year lost during COVID, the tournament has remained an annual event, with Malone and McKinley continuing to organize it. La Grande students not playing help run the tournament directly, including concessions and cleaning the gyms. Alongside them, 29 officials worked throughout the weekend to keep things running smoothly. Among these officials were various EOU athletes and staff, Oregon School Activities Association (OSAA) officials, and even 7 La Grande High School baseball alumni that stepped up. As commented by McKinley:
“On the court, I had 7 La Grande High School baseball alumni that officiated. That’s cool for me to have those kids come back.”
While the tournament is technically organized to raise money for baseball, it goes far beyond that. According to McKinley, the Shootout offers student basketball players from smaller or less competitive school districts to participate in a full tournament. With junior high and high school basketball becoming increasingly competitive and, “falling into the select all-star model,” as McKinley put it, tournaments such as these allow kids to play games without it being hyper competitive
As such, good sportsmanship and respectful play are heavily emphasized. During each game, a Player of the Game Sportsmanship Award was given to one player on each team during the 3rd quarter, reinforcing the focus on respectful play, with McKinley commenting:
“That’s really what we want from athletics, to promote sportsmanship and promote peer competitiveness.”
Beyond the games and the fundraising, the tournament is simply an opportunity to get the community excited about something and bring them together in support of student athletes. The extra traffic and potential business brought to the area over the weekend is also a nice bonus. As again commented by McKinley.
“It just brings a lot to our community and that’s something that we’re really proud of. It’s not just about baseball.”
La Grande High School would like to give special thanks to EOU for their participation in hosting and officiating, Pepsi and Subway for sponsoring the event, along with Flying End Design for their incredible work in creating the tournament T-Shirts. McKinley would also like to thank Angie Malone for continuing to be the driving force behind the Shootout.
