A family affair

Can the the responsibilities of nursing an infant son and holding up your end while playing 3-on-3 basketball be copacetic? JoEne Liezen will find out when she hits the mean streets and tackles those two-fold responsibilities in this year’s Spokane Hoopfest.

“We’ll see how it goes,” said the young mother of a nearly three-month-old son. “I’m lucky. Andrew can eat out of a bottle, too, so if there’s an emergency I’ll be OK.”

Besides her mother will be there to lend a hand if necessary, another example of the family friendly atmosphere of Hoopfest, which this year will be even moreso with the addition of a family-specific division.

“We used to do a family intergenerational bracket a few years ago, but it tapered off,” said marketing and sponsorships manager Megan Freehan. “We had requests to bring it back.”

A total of 93 teams, 46 all-male and 47 coed have been bracketed primarily because their teams are made up of relatives, Freehan said, although the range of recreational to competitive made bracketing a challenge.

The idea was broached by Hoopfest co-founder Rick Betts, who is entering his sixth year of playing in the tournament with three sons, whose ages now range from 23 to 16.

“As I got older, it drove me crazy sprinting all over town seeing everyone’s games,” he said. “I had a flash of brilliance and formed our own team.”

Over the years people seemed envious of the fact that families like the Betts were playing together and expressed similar interest, he said. But before Internet sign-up it was difficult to verify family ties.

The Web has made it easier to define, said Betts, making it easier for families who want to play together to do so.

“Basically, I said this year we’re going to do it,” he said.

Liezen is on a coed team with her father, Jon Heimbigner.

“It was important for me to get back in shape and get going again,” she said. “The initial plan was I’d kind of be maybe the sub. I’d gained 40 pounds during pregnancy and have about 15 to go. But I played a couple times and felt really good.”

Her brothers Chad and Jeremy Heimbigner are also teaming up, on a men’s team with cousins Kurt Heimbigner and Rhett Humphrey.

The Heimbigners have had recreational basketball ties with Glenn Williams, the boys basketball coach at Mead. This year, Williams will be in action with sons Eric and Bryan and brother-in-law Bob Bashaw.

“I think it was the boys’ idea,” Williams said. “It just sounded like fun. I know we haven’t ever played together, I believe, in anything at all.”

Williams said he played regularly in Hoopfest with his recreational buddies for several years.

“I haven’t played for 8 or 9 years,” he said. “When you’re a parent, you’re too busy watching your own kids.”

One of those years was when Bryan, now playing at Whitworth College, was a third-grader teamed with Adam Morrison, the Gonzaga University sensation. The pair would go on to lead Mead to a second-place state finish in 2003.

There came a time, Bryan said, when dad outlawed Hoopfest. “The last time each of us played was before high school,” he said. “Dad gave the ixnay on that.”

After originally planning to play with his brother in a coed bracket, Bryan said they concluded they should try to get the whole family together, adding Bashaw, a Pullman physical therapist who, like Glenn, played sports at Pullman High.

“It’s going to really be fun,” Glenn Williams said. “As you get older, your kids become way more like friends. It will be three friends getting together who happen to be related.”

The good news for Eric and Bryan is that dad won’t be doing any coaching.

“I’ll be too busy trying to catch my breath,” Glenn laughed. “I want to stay upright. That’s my whole goal.”

Eric gave his take on Glenn’s role for the All About Bob team strategy.

“As far as dad goes, don’t get him the ball,” Eric said. “If you do it’s not coming back out. Guaranteed. We want to limit his touches and maximize ours.”

Eric, a 2002 Mead grad has been attending the University of Oregon, but is transferring to WSU. He will, at 6-foot-5, hang around the basket. Bryan, who followed his father to Whitworth, is the play-making guard.

The game plan is simple.

“I’ll do the typical screens and rebounding and try not to foul out. It’s nice you can’t do that at Hoopfest,” Eric said. “Bryan will try to do the technical stuff and I’ll do the grunt labor. I don’t remember plays anyways.”

Added Bryan, “We still have to determine everybody’s roles. We will have plays. My dad, in his prime, loved to post up so we’re going to do some of that, I’m sure. I might be the biggest harper on my brother. He hasn’t played in a while and might have forgotten a lot of stuff.”

The bottom line, Liezen and the Williams family agrees, is that they play Hoopfest to have fun. And Liezen is already passing on the importance of family and Hoopfest to her son just by bringing him there.

That is something Betts envisioned when he promoted the idea of bringing back the family division.

“My view of Hoopfest is it’s a great balance between recreation and competition,” he said. “For those, like me, who are a little sick of the overly competitive element to sports, this is something you can do as a family. I think it will get bigger and bigger as people understand it’s out there as an option.”