Streetball Can Be Pain In The Paint Hoopfest Careers Can Last Just Minutes

In all likelihood, Roy Scott’s Hoopfest career is over. All 18 minutes of it.

Scott, playing in the world’s largest 3-on-3 street basketball tournament for the first time, suffered an apparent tear in the Achilles’ tendon of his right foot less than 20 minutes into his team’s first game Saturday.

And by 8:30 a.m. he was in a wheelchair awaiting transportation to a local hospital.

“This is my first year and I didn’t even make it through the first game,” moaned the 49-year-old Valley resident, one of the earliest casualties of this year’s eighth annual event.

“He really let his team down,” chided Scott’s wife Pat, while watching medical personnel in one of the first-aid tents throw a quick wrap on her husband’s injured foot.

“I’d probably better get a gun. They shoot horses when this happens, don’t they?” she added.

Scott seemed to take the injury, which occurred in the latter stages of a 20-17 opening-round loss, quite well.

“From now on, I’m just going to coach and take care of the cooler,” he said.

“And there’s probably going to be a different kind of liquid in there now that he can’t play anymore,” added Mark Disney, one of Scott’s Four Fun teammates.

Fittingly, Scott suffered his injury on a court sponsored by Blue Cross.

“He’s probably going to have to have surgery,” said Jason Sargent, a nurse practitioner and CEO of Physician Hospital Network, which annually staffs PacifiCare’s three first-aid tents at Hoopfest.

Scott didn’t exactly rule out another attempt at Hoopfest.

“But this isn’t a good sign,” he said, nodding at his foot.

According to Sargent, Scott was among the first of more than 1,200 competitors volunteer medical staffers expect to treat for minor injuries and heat-related illnesses during Hoopfest’s two-day run.

And that number, Sargent said, could run even higher if Saturday morning’s rush on medical attention continues through this evening’s final games.

Two people were treated in the tent at the intersection of Riverside and Wall before the event started - one for a torn fingernail and another for a scraped knee. Several people stopped by for aspirin.

And just prior to Scott’s arrival, 12-year-old Curtis Cook, from Newman Lake, was treated for a knee strain suffered in his team’s lopsided first-round win.

“We’re way ahead. We only needed one more basket and then this happens,” said Cook’s father and Hoopfest coach, Curtis.

The younger Cook said it “felt like I twisted my kneecap off.” But he said he didn’t plan on missing any of his Sun Devils’ remaining games.

Injuries ran the gamut from bruises and strains to muscle pulls and broken bones. One court monitor reported an incident involving a cardiac problem, but said the victim appeared to be conscious and alert when he was taken from the court. No further details could be obtained.

Otherwise, there appeared to be no major medical incidents among the thousands of spectators and players who packed the downtown area under a warm sun that produced a high temperature of 80 degrees. Hoopfest officials did not estimate the size of the crowd, but put the final count of competitors at 17,854.

And the masses were well behaved, according to Ken Olson, the event’s site operations manager.

“It’s been a great Hoopfest as far as that goes,” Olson said. “There hasn’t been any kind of crowd situations that have occurred. Things have been working very smoothly so far.”

Play starts at 8 a.m. today. The finals of the Action Sportswear Open Division will be played on Nike Center Court in the late afternoon and early evening.

Letting it fly

The shot of the day didn’t come from the hyper-competitive Open Division, as one might expect. Instead, it was 12-year-old Zach Bray hovering in the air as he flew out of bounds along the right baseline, only to hoist a shot over the backboard and through the net.

“He does that all the time,” beamed Zach’s mother Debbie.

Zach, playing for the Wolverines in a seventh-grade coed division, said he first tried the shot several years back.

“In third grade, I took the ball with one hand on a rebound or something and launched it over and made it,” he explained.

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