After a three-year hiatus, the Filipino Community brought back their long running annual Family Day Weekend Basketball Tournament on Saturday and Sunday, February 18th and 19th.
The gym at Central Collegiate was packed with hundreds of members of Moose Jaw's Filipino Community for two days of basketball, food, fun, friends and family.
“It’s all about family, friends and community,” Victor Morales event organizer said.
“The main emphasis is family over the Family Day Weekend.”
The tournament started well over a decade ago.
It has served as a major focal point for the local Filipino community, on a weekend that for many at the tournament's origin were alone, and thousands of kilometres away from their families in the Philippines.
Today the number of people in Moose Jaw who trace their origins to the Philippines is unofficially over 1,100 people.
“Today is family fun day for the Filipino Community of Moose Jaw,” Morales said. “It’s all about focusing on the family. A fun time for the community to come out to.”
Morales said holding the tournament after a three year hiatus - a hiatus due to COVID 19 pandemic health measures - was important and plans were to re-start the event as soon as possible following easing the pandemic measures.
“It’s very important. They take their time; they have all of the time in the world to be together with their family and at the same time with their friends.”
Morales said not holding the tournament for three years has had a major impact on the local Filipino community.
“It has impacted because pretty much they don’t know where to go. They have been asking, ‘what are we doing annually?’ And this is the only time we or they can take time off (from work) you know to be with the whole family.”
For Morales, it’s important to maintain the links within the community and centering the gathering on basketball is a no brainer.
Basketball is not only the Philippines national sport but at the same time also its most popular.
Saturday's men's division play saw Central Collegiate's bleachers full with loud fans who not only cheered but socialized during the game.
At the game between the Underdogs and All In Ones - the play was light hearted with, in most cases, the obviously older All In One team at times putting on a skills competition.
A skills competition where the obviously crowd favourite was loudly cheered on.
Only to be responded to with a barrage of long three pointers by the Underdogs.
Morales chuckled when asked if the tournament was a cross between competitive play and a Harlem Globetrotters game.
“It (the tournament) is competitive. But this one (game) is just for fun because it is battling for third (place). As soon as you get past this elimination, then that is when it gets intense,” he said.
The men’s division was the highlight of the event starting at 7 am on Saturday and running until 9 pm to crown the men's tournament champion.
On Sunday, the tournament ran until noon and features the junior, Tiny Tikes as well as the skills competition.
Sunday's skills competition was open to everyone and the highlight featured the moms out showing off their basketball skills.
Despite food being available, Morales said the event is not a replacement for and has nothing to do with the now - temporarily - defunct Motif.
Meals were available to allow the vendors to earn some extra money, but also as a means to allow the community to break bread together and socialize, thereby building the bonds between friends and families, he said.
“The food is there. Everybody is staying in the gym [where the food is…],” he said. Morales said he was happy with how the event turned out after the three year hibernation.
“It turned out really good because we didn’t have that much time to plan this but what’s going to happen is this is just kind of like a prelude to next year. It is going to be bigger.”
This year the event didn’t have an admission charge but if people wanted to offer a goodwill donation of a buck or two to help defray expenses it was welcome, but a goodwill donation was not something that was strictly enforced.
The key thing was to get families and people out and re-start the event.
During the years the event was in hiatus, Morales said there were “smaller groups (holding events) but it is not like a big group that you can call community.”
A number of businesses gave donations to help make the tournament possible.
“It’s just beautiful to have all of this support,” he said.
