More than a ‘redneck Hoopfest’: Courtzite in Chewelah is a small-town basketball bonanza

CHEWELAH, Wash. – A curtain of smoke hung low in the Colville River Valley as I drove past the farm fields, gas stations and recently renovated casino. Just past the Dollar General, a bright orange construction sign displayed a message.

Main St. Closed.

Starting at NAPA Auto Parts and stretching to Third Street, hoopers included 4-year-olds in Riverside Ram Nation jerseys, college players, older folks and many others gathered about 50 miles north of Spokane on July 27 for the second Courtzite event. Eleven basketball hoops lined the streets as people funneled in to watch Chewelah’s one-day 3-on-3 tournament. They had different backgrounds, beliefs and experiences, but every one of them was there for the same purpose: to hoop.

I parked my car about six or so blocks from the action. Once I had gathered my basketball shoes, bottle of water and Gatorade, I stuffed it all in my bag and began the trek to Main Street.

Jumping from 69 teams last year to 90 teams this year, it was clear Courtzite had grown in size and splendor.

I hadn’t played in it last year, but I heard plenty of my friends talk about it. Springdale, Chewelah, Spokane, Colville, Deer Park, Loon Lake and the most rural parts of Eastern Washington had representatives of the game attending.

I figured, as a Stevens County kid, it was a great opportunity to play against some of the best in the area, many of whom I’d grown up playing the game with since seventh grade.

Courtzite’s bracket is set up in a similar fashion to Hoopfest, except if you lose twice, that’s it; you’re done. There’s no consolation bracket. When I won the consolation bracket during Hoopfest, I had felt good, even great, about being the best loser.

But here, it was different. There were winners and losers, and nothing in between.

I noticed myriad details as I made my way to the court where I was playing. Parents eagerly watched their kids on the court while occasionally shouting things much too inappropriate for a few 8-year-olds playing basketball.

Players and family members milled about sidewalks, shuffling in and out of the way of others like a human version of the rush-hour traffic board game I grew up playing. There was a stand for food, water – even a local jewelry booth was there.

There was also a shooting competition on one of the hoops. Each participant put in $5 and had to make a certain number of shots in 30 seconds from five spots on the court to win. The winner got the sum of all the money put in, which ended up being $65.

I finally managed to navigate my way through the sea of people, past the hoops where younger kids were playing and made it to my court. I scanned the area for my three teammates. It was about 10:30 a.m., and our first game started in 30 minutes.

We were playing in the men’s competitive bracket, a step down from the elite courts. The bracket down from us was men’s recreational. The rest of the brackets were divided by age and gender.

After a few minutes of sitting on the curb while I put on my shoes, Elitie emerged pushing his motorized scooter through the crowd. Elitie’s brother, John, arrived shortly after. And our last teammate, Tazz, I found in a camping chair with headphones on. Our team’s name was “DP Boys” because we were all from Deer Park. Needless to say, we lacked imagination when we decided on that name.

Once the game before ours ended, we took the court and took some warmup shots.

Ten minutes of warming up turned to 30, and soon it became apparent the other team wasn’t showing up. Only one person, dressed in a yellow Kobe Bryant jersey, showed up to compete. The others, he said, were running really, really late.

Eventually, he was forced to forfeit so the next game could go on, but not before making a few remarks about how lucky we were.

“We would’ve (messed) y’all up,” he basically said, except the word he used in place of “messed” wasn’t PG-rated.

The four of us, now huddled in a group, laughed off his comments. It’s hard to do much of anything, let alone make any threats, when your whole team doesn’t show up.

He tried to pick up some random players to join his team, but we quickly vetoed that idea. Especially since the players he tried to pick up looked taller, stronger and possibly better then all of us.

After taking our first “win” of the day, we felt excited. I figured there was no way we would face that team again.

I was talking to my team and sipping my Gatorade Glacier Freeze on the curb, when I noticed a man running around wearing a custom Courtzite jersey and black shorts with little yellow rubber ducks dotted across them. The back of his jersey read, “McQuain.”

Dakota McQuain manages and does office work for two local marijuana stores. He’s coached junior varsity at Jenkins High School in Chewelah, does home aide care for his little brother and is 16 credits away from finishing his bachelor’s in education.

Beyond all that, McQuain just loves basketball.

“I’m basically just trying to create a stronger culture of basketball in Stevens County,” McQuain said.

McQuain, who grew up in Valley, said he remembers the first time he was able to dribble the ball between his legs. Once he did, he fell in love with the game and consistently pushed himself to get better.

Now McQuain, 29, wants to share his passion for basketball and expand its reach north of Spokane. With 40 volunteers this year, McQuain said about half are related to him. McQuain said at the peak of this year’s tournament, he estimates about 1,000 people showed up, although he admits math is not his strong suit.

Drawing inspiration from Hoopfest, he pitched the idea of Courtzite to multiple businesses in and around Chewelah.

Having been born and raised in the area, McQuain said he had a strong relationship with many of the businesses prior to proposing the idea. McQuain said 13 of them pitched in about $1,000 each.

One of those businesses, John Lynch Construction LLC, gave $3,500. John Lynch, the owner, is a family friend of McQuain. Lynch’s son, who shares the same first name, has been friends with McQuain since elementary school. They bonded, even though McQuain was four years older, because one day they both came to school wearing former Tampa Bay Buccaneers and hall of famer John Lynch’s jersey. Lynch Jr. wore the jersey because it bore his same last name, and McQuain was just a fan.

With the name of their business slapped across the backboard, Lynch’s donation materialized in the form of the elite bracket’s hoop, or where the best of the best play.

I watched McQuain balance his time between playing in the tournament and running about solving problems. As McQuain bounce around, I heard a familiar voice call out from behind me.

“You want to come with us to Subway?”

It was Josh, and next to him was Jake. They were two of my closest friends from high school, even though they both went to a different school. They had won their first game and just got done losing their second when I ran into them. While my first game wasn’t until 11 a.m., their first game was at 8:30.

On the way to Subway, I heard a man with a mullet and wearing jorts and a tank top talking on the phone with someone.

“I’m out here at this …” the man said, pausing to think about his next words. “Redneck Hoopfest.”

Josh, Jake and I laughed, making it obvious we were eavesdropping. Luckily, the man didn’t seem to care.

We agreed with him, for the most part. But secretly, I knew Courtzite was a little deeper than just “ redneck Hoopfest.”

Trey Smith, 31, is a court monitor who works with an organization called Safe Communities Partnership that aims to help high-risk teens in a multitude of ways. Twice a week, Smith teaches a social and emotional learning class. On Saturday, starting at 10 a.m., his organization will host a 3-on-3 basketball tournament at the Riverfront Park courts in downtown Spokane. There will also be free food, games and face painting.

“One of the most important and best things kids can do is play sports growing up,” Smith said. “I think it instills confidence in people, it instills discipline, whether that’s basketball, football, boxing. It gives kids structure as well. And I think for a lot of young kids, structure, discipline and confidence can go a long way.”

I felt confident going into the next game after eating Subway. Unfortunately, that confidence got stomped within 10 minutes.

Most people who have played basketball know the agonizing feeling of trying to guard someone who’s wider, taller, has immaculate footwork and knows how to use their body in the paint. With his back to the basket the entire time, a 6-foot-3 Shaquille O’Neal managed to single-handedly dismantle our team with a series of drop-steps, up-and-unders and an assortment of prolific post moves. Perhaps Shaq’s not a fair comparison for this guy, though, because he made every free throw. Shaq could never.

Once we had taken our first loss in devastating fashion, we knew the stakes were higher. One more loss and we were out.

Another 30 minutes passed, and before long, it was time to play our third game.

We moved with a different energy during warmups and came ready to play. We devised a plan to set more off-ball screens and move around the court so much that the other team would only see us in a blur. Our plan worked. Before long, we were up big and managed to secure our second victory. We were in the losers bracket, but felt certain we could work our way back to the championship.

Except there was a roadblock standing between us and eternal glory. Eternal glory, in this case, was a team picture in front of our bracket that was posted on the side of NAPA Auto Parts. The roadblock was the fact that John had to leave early to go to a wedding. He wouldn’t play for the rest of the tournament, which meant we didn’t have a sub.

Between the end of the third game and the start of our fourth, I walked a block to watch Josh and Jake play.

That’s when I realized Courtzite is an event at which anything can happen. Including, but not limited to, watching a barely 5-foot, 50-year-old, slightly rotund man wearing a red headband, neon orange shorts and black Carhartt tank top shoot lights out from behind the two-point line.

My friends tried to mount a comeback, but the red headband man’s shooting ability was too much. I stopped watching with about 5 minutes left and walked back to my court.

The Kobe Bryant jersey was back, and this time, so was his team. To match the theme, every player was wearing an NBA jersey. There was a Kevin Garnett jersey, Tracy McGrady jersey and a guy taller than all of us wearing a Wilt Chamberlain jersey. Now it was time to see if they really were going to deliver on their teammates previous promise.

Were they really going to “mess” us up? We certainly didn’t think so, even though we didn’t have a sub.

The game started with each team trading buckets back and forth. I was locked in after making a few shots, but 10 minutes of playing without a sub left our whole team feeling exhausted. We called a timeout with an 11-10 lead.

The intensity turned up a notch after the timeout. Defenders pushed their man nearly out of bounds, fouls started to hurt more and made shots became harder to find. With the score tied at 16, I raced forward along the 3-point line and slinked back into the corner. My defender, Kevin Garnett jersey, didn’t have enough time to catch up, so I caught the ball in my shooting pocket and knocked down the shot to put us up two. The game went to 20, so we only had to score two points or last a few more seconds to win.

“Ten seconds left,” the court monitor called out.

I thought we were going to do it. I thought we were going to win. Five, four, three; the seconds were whittling down to zero.

Kobe jersey caught the ball at the top of the two-point line, crossed right to left and pulled up over Tazz. He was fading away with Tazz’s hand draped across his face, yet he still managed to make the shot. We were going to overtime.

The first person to score two points won the game, the referee told us at the start of overtime. We did rock, paper, scissors to see who got the ball first and lost. After that, it took less than a minute for everything to fall apart.

A player from the neighboring court interrupted our game to grab a basketball that had careened from his court and made its way to ours.

Thinking the game was on pause, I left the Wilt Chamberlain jersey wide open in the corner. He, of course, made the shot as I attempted to close out on him. The game was over. We had lost just like that.

I put my head in my hands and trudged toward the sidewalk where my friends were. Jake and Josh patted my back and told me I played well.

I apologized to Elitie and Tazz for giving up the winner, but they reassured me it wasn’t my fault, even if it was.

Sometimes things just don’t work out the way you want.

Jake, Josh and I complained about how we could have and should have won our respective games, as we began the commute back to our vehicles. We talked about how we got cheated of a win, how it was unfair and whatever other garbage we could muster to make the pain of losing such a close game a little more bearable.

But these thoughts dissipated as we walked past the elite court, the food stand and the hoops where the younger kids played.

Watching four kids hold up their bracket as their eyes beamed with joy, seeing parents jump up and down when their child scored, the high-fives and hugs from everyone around, the booming laughs heard from a block away.

All of it served as a reminder that maybe, just maybe, there’s more to life than winning and losing.