Spokane Hoopfest

The Spokane Hoopfest Association's 3-on-3 basketball tournament is a huge event that happens in downtown Spokane every year on the last weekend in June. It is billed as the largest event of it's kind  in the world.

I don't know if this is true but every year it gets bigger and bigger. In fact the number of teams that register is now greater than 6400 which translates into about 25000 players.

You know what that means, right?

If you plan on being in Spokane that weekend to play or just watch Hoopfest you had better book a hotel room early.

How early?

I'd say about 6 months in advance just to be on the safe side because there are players coming from about 42 states to participate. Figure in that each player probably brings several other family and friends and that adds up to whole lot of hotel rooms.

It's estimated the for Spokane, Hoopfest brings in about 30 million bucks. That's a lot greenbacks for the city of Spokane and the downtown merchants.

The Hoopfest Spokane Association also donates 1 million bucks to worthy charities such as Special Olympics, YWCA and YMCA. They also have a basketball court construction program for youth sports programs.

It takes about 3000 volunteers to put the whole thing on for the weekend. Many volunteers are needed as court monitors as well as folks to set all of the courts and run the tournament.

Most of the downtown core is blocked off to make room for the 400 Basketball courts that are needed to hold the 13000 games are setup. You know what means right?

Getting around downtown is going to be tough if you don't know where to park and how to get to the heart of the action. Fortunately I'm going to let you in on the information that you need to know.

The Spokane Transit Association (STA) has a Hoopfest page with all of the special route information including a nice map showing where you can park and ride the STA shuttle to the downtown area. The STA Hoopfest Pass costs $1 for the day and trust me, it is worth every penny.

I remember the first time I took my son to play in Hoopfest, I ended up getting a parking ticket for parking in an area that I thought was free. Don't let this happen to you. Ride the bus, it's worth saving your sanity.

Here is the official Hoopfest map showing the various court locations as well as other important information. It's nice to know which streets are blocked off in the downtown area and this map shows them.

If you come to Spokane for Hoopfest weekend either to play or watch I hope you have a great time. My son doesn't play anymore because of his baseball schedule but we usually try to get downtown to watch some of the great teams that come into town to play. They really put on quite a show.