Shots are fired — at the basketball hoop.
The “Heroes Basketball Tournament” will be held at the Student Activities Center Saturday with a 3-on-3 basketball tournament put on by the Reserve Officer Training Corps of Dixie State University.
The tournament is a community-wide fundraiser for the ROTC program and is only $30 per team to register.
“We have been out in the community promoting this thing, and we would like as many as possible to come out,” said Russell Peacock, the senior officer in command of the event and an integrated studies major from Enterprise. “We try to do multiple fundraising activities throughout the year and have a big one like this one every April.”
There will be four different divisions for competition in the tournament. A men’s adult, men’s youth and coed division will be bracketed within a double-elimination tournament that begins at 10 a.m.
Various awards have been collected by the ROTC for various prizes from local community businesses, including clothing apparel, gym memberships and restaurant gift certificates.
The ROTC has done other fundraiser activities for the community, including rock climbing and other military obstacle courses in past years. The ROTC felt inspired to put on the “Heroes Basketball Tournament” this year, though.
“Logistically, we just wanted to keep it simple with low overhead but still be able to generate the funds that we need to raise because we do not receive any direct funds from the army, so these fundraisers are vital for our program in order to do the kind of training we need to do,” Peacock said.
Sign ups for the “Heroes Basketball Tournament” can be found online at dixie.edu/rotc or can be completed at the ROTC building on campus, located just south of the Burns Arena.
