Three on three basketball: a fun way to relax with friends, or a highly competitive competition? For our school it seems more like the latter. On Saturday June 1, there was such a tournament at our school, with some very intense competition.

The tournament was characterized by hard play and a lot of competition. Some of the players in the tournament were surprised by just how competitive this tournament was.

“I thought it would be really laid back, but it really wasn’t. I was shocked at how hard everyone was competing, and how much people wanted to win,” junior Joe Bynum said.

Even though the tournament might have been more competitive than the players had expected, they still enjoyed it.

“It was a lot of fun; I really enjoyed how the games were really intense. It reminded me of when I would play basketball during the season,” Joe Bynum said.

Bynum’s older and senior brother Nick also played in the tournament. They faced each other before the playoff round.

“I liked being able to play against my brother,” Joe Bynum said. “It was a very good contest between the two of us, and it felt really good to beat his team, even though they won the whole thing in the playoffs,”

Nick, on the other hand, was just happy to have won the entire thing.

“I really liked winning that last game. It was a good tournament the whole way through, and I think that my team really came together in those last couple games,” Nick Bynum said.

There was a lot of switching teams, with players leaving one team for another just for a better shot of winning.

“I switched teams from a group of my friends to a group of seniors who I thought had a good chance of winning. Lucky for me, the team that I joined won the whole tournament,” junior John Wilson said.

This last minute team switching did lead to some teams having to leave the competition.

“We had John [Wilson] on our team, but he left to join a better team, which left my team one short for the tournament,” junior Ethan LeBoeuf said.

While LeBoeuf’s team had to drop out of the tournament, he was not upset with Wilson for leaving for a better team.

“I don’t blame him for leaving,” LeBoeuf said with a laugh. “I think that he realized that he would have a far better chance of winning with a different team, because we were not that good,”

Some teams were comprised only of groups of friends, while others were picked because of athletic skill. Joe Bynum decided with his teammates that he has played with before. They chose the name Trifecta

“I picked some guys who I had played with before,” Joe Bynum said. “One guy was on my Burke Basketball team and we really tore it up, and then the other guy I have just played a lot of pickup basketball with,”

The idea of the tournament being only a three on three competitions is a little misleading; some of the teams had four players.

“We had four people on our team for two reasons,” Nick Bynum said. “The first reason was because we wanted one more person who was really skilled, and the other reason was because we wanted to be able to have someone sit out and rest if they got tired,”