Tournament director Todd Bell, West Rowan AD, said 3,500 tickets sold (adult and student) is a good estimate to gauge the sucess of the latest installment of the Sam Moir Christmas Classic.
Tournament games were played Thursday, Friday and Saturday. North Rowan swept both championships.
Numbers were down from last year at the gate but still amazingly high for a local prep event.
Catawba College’s food service handled concessions.
“The Sam Moir tournament continues to showcase the talents of the quality student athletes that we have in Rowan and Davie counties,” Bell said. “There are many people that work long hours prior to and during the tournament that makes it the success that it is. These folks make it nice for the teams to be able to just show up and play.”
The county ADs obviously ly put in a lot of hours at the tournament, and so did the folks at Catawba.
Catawba SID Jim Lewis and his stat crew assistants provided the sort of detailed stats that everyone would like to see all the time, while other worked behind the scenes.
“The custodial staff at Catawba is awesome,” Bell said. “The facilities are kept to a tee at all times. Some of the people that were there when I arrived at 10 a.m. each day were already working — and these same folks were there when I left each night and they were still working.”
Dennis Davidson is in his final days as Catawba’s AD, and he was a calming, organized presence as always.
“Dennis and Catawba have established an awesome tournament and we athletic directors hope to continue and build upon the success of the Sam Moir in the future,” Bell said. “Dennis will be hard to replace. He opened his door for us to learn how to run a tournament of this magnitude with success. He was there for us all the way through championship night. That gave us peace, just knowing he was around.”