A Delaware high school sports tournament with a national profile will be reborn next year.
State officials announced return of the Slam Dunk to the Beach boys' basketball tournament Monday in Rehoboth Beach. It’s expected to relaunch in the week after Christmas in December 2014 under a new format at its original home, Cape Henlopen High School where it ran from 1990 to 2003.
The Delaware Sports Commission has tapped Position Sports, a national sports marketing company, to manage the event operations, recruit teams, and find possible broadcast partners.
"Position Sports has an incredible reputation in the basketball community around the country," said tournament chairman Matthew Robinson. "They put on the Jordan Classic, a high profile high school all-star tournament along with running Nike camps in the summer for several prominent players. They have a wealth of experience that they are going to be bring to us and making this event first rate."
Several NBA stars, including Dwight Howard, LeBron James, and Al Harrington, played in Slam Dunk as high schoolers during its initial 13 year run.
Tournament Chairman Matthew Robinson says the hope is to recapture the tournament’s popularity, and with the economic boost it provided to Delaware’s beaches during their slower winter season.
“For those 4 or 5 days around the tournament there will be unique visitors coming state, all the different businesses are going to benefit from those visitors," said Robinson. "My role is working with the sport as well as the business community so that they work together towards a common goal and the spectators and the participants have an incredible opportunity.”
The tournament’s original run ended in 2004. The tournament’s founder, Bobby Jacobs, initially cited health reasons, but a state audit of the tournament in 2006 found Jacobs had mishandled tournament funds. He eventually accepted a plea deal on forgery charges and was sentenced to a year in prison and ordered to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars in restitution.
Robinson says that history was taken into consideration when reviving the tournament.
“We have an executive committee that it going to be oversight in terms of the finances and we’ve hired [Position Sports] that is contracted out to provide the service of getting the teams for us and operating the tournament," said Robinson. "We like to think that there are checks and balances in place to make sure what happened before wouldn’t happen again.”
As of now, the Delaware Sports Commission doesn't have any plans of expanding the Slam Dunk to include girls basketball teams .
"That's not to say it wouldn't happen, but I think our focus right now is getting the [boy's] tournament up and making it a financially viable entity that is a positive experience for everybody," said Robinson.
The Delaware Sports Commission also unveiled the Slam Dunk to the Beach’s new logo.
Information and updates about the tournament are available at its website.