SoCalHoops Tournament News

George Yardley Newport Harbor HS
Tournament Brackets--(June 18, 2002)

	What:	Newport Harbor HS George Yardley Tournament
	When:	July 5, 6 & 7 2002
	Where:	Newport Harbor HS (Main & Aux Gyms) Vanguard University Ensign Middle School Estancia HS Orange HS
	Who:	32 Top HS Teams

Larry Hirst, the head coach at Newport Harbor HS e-mailed us this morning and he wanted us to remind everyone that it's once again coming up on time for Newport Harbor High School to host the annual summer   "George Yardley Cage Classic."   This year the tournament will be played from July 5-7  2002, and will take place with the majority of games at Newport Harbor.  Additional first round and second round games, as well as consolation games will be played at other locations, including Vanguard University, Ensign Middle School, Estancia HS, and Orange HS.

The tournament this year has 44 teams (up from the 32 teams that participated last year), and will feature 93 games in three days, including all consolation and championship games.  This is a very well run tournament, one which remarkably had only two games last time which didn't start on time.   All games are played using regulation high school rules, including a 32 minute game with four quarters, stop-clock.   Because the tournament now has 44 teams, the bracket has become somewhat complicated, but it basically looks like this.  Note: You will absolutely need the schedule chart below to understand the brackets and to make sense of them beyond the first round.  Game locations, times, and the like can only be discerned by looking at the schedule grid (see below the bracket):

The bracket looks nice, but after the first round, it won't make sense unless you have the following schedule.  We didn't have time to insert all of the game times into the bracket, so you'll have to extrapolate.   We also didn't have time to include spots in the bracket above where the losers' games are shown on the official bracket, so you'll just have to figure it out.   Here's the game schedule, which correlates to the bracket above.  If you need game time and location after the first round, this is where to find it.

Anyway, that's it for the bracket and the schedule.  Now for the historial stuff.  Who is George Yardley, anyway, and why is there a tournament named after him?  Not a lot of people these days remember George Yardley.  In fact, if you ask most kids today who George Yardley was, they'll probably just give you a blank stare and say "Who?"  

George Yardley is probably the most famous and successful (at least in terms of basketball) of any Newport Harbor HS grad ever to play the game.  Still not impressed?  How about the fact that in seven seasons, the NBA Hall of Fame 6'-5" forward scored 2,001 points in a single NBA season from 1957-1958, an NBA record at the time in which he averaged more than 27 ppg.  In seven short seasons in the NBA, he appeared in six NBA All Star games, and averaged 17 ppg over the course of his abbreviated career during an era when scoring 70 for the whole team was a high-scoring game. He retired from the NBA in 1960 to support his family simply because he couldn't do so on the salaries paid at the time:  His salary never topped out at $25,000, which is roughly 100 times less what Eddy Curry or Tyson Chandler will make before they ever even appear in their first NBA game. . . my how times have changed.    George retired in 1960 to support his family and started a very successful business.  If you want to know more about him, there's a George Yardley Company website, and it also features some very interesting historical facts and stats about George's great career.   How impressive was his career?  When he was inducted in the Hall of Fame, Jerry West said, "I've never told George this before, but when I was a kid in "West Virginia, I used to watch Yardley on television and marvel over his fabulous jump shot." 

George and his family have close ties to the Newport Beach community, and he and his wife Diana have raised four kids there.  Now its his turn to give a little back and for the school to honor him a bit.  So there's going to be this little tournament in early July.  Actually it's not so little.   It's pretty large, and just about every top team in Orange County will be there, and some from outside the OC area, 44 teams in all.

Hopefully we'll be able to make it down to see some of these games, but chances are we won't because we'll once again be back at ABCD Camp and Eastern Invitational, so we'll have to count on others to send reports.  In the meantime, if you need more information or have questions about the tournament, you can reach Larry Hirst at (949) 515-6346.  Tell him SoCalHoops sent you.

©Copyright SoCal Hoops 1997-2001
All rights reserved
E-mail: jegesq@socalhoops.com