CCHS, Madison ready for team tourney

About this time last year, Culpeper County High School basketball coach James Thompson took a group of players to tournament in Madison not knowing how many of them would actually be enrolled at CCHS next year.

As it turned out, the majority of those that played for Culpeper in the spring wound up at East-ern View in the fall, but the tournament, which will be put on against today and Sunday at Madison County High School, still had it’s benefits for Thompson and the Blue Devils.

Josh Majors played with the Culpeper group last year even though he was still an eighth grader at St. Luke’s and Thompson said the experience of playing against varsity competition last spring helped make him one of Culpeper’s top players as a freshman.

“That alone last year catapulted Josh to where he knew he could play with varsity players,” Thompson said.

“It’s a cheap way for teams to get to play six games,” Madison coach Tim Taylor, who runs the event, said. “It’s a nice tournament. We got some quality teams that are coming in. Everybody is going to get six games and we try to match teams up so the level of play is roughly the same.”

This time around Thompson is taking a squad of 12 that will likely have a lot more resemblance to his varsity roster once the season rolls around. Majors will play again this year along with Bobby Zajkowski, Cortez Rollins, Justin Smith and Larry Ralph, all major contributors for the Blue Devils in 2008-09.
Another eighth-grader, Nik Stewart, will follow in Majors’ footsteps and play with the Culpeper team, hoping to make the same kid of gains Majors did.

The Culpeper squad will get to face some stiff competition. Host Madison returns all but one starter off the varsity team that went 28-1 and advanced to the Group A state semifinals. Culpeper’s former Cedar Run District rival Stonewall Jackson will also field a team, as well as Group AAA Albemarle and Group AA William Monroe, which advanced to the Region II semifinals.

Taylor said his Madison team might be shorthanded on Saturday with the Mountaineers foot-ball program holding a 7-on-7 football camp and the MCHS baseball team possibly playing a re-gional tournament game. But the Madison coach sees possible benefits.

“Some of the younger kids are going to get to play and that can be good,” Taylor said.

Culpeper opens the tournament against Skyline at 9 a.m. and plays Page County at noon before facing Albemarle at 3 p.m. Thompson said the event has grown a lot since last year, when a hand-ful of teams participated.

“This time it’s way more popular,” he said. “He’s got 12 teams this year. Coaches like it because it’s a good brand of basketball and good officiating. Six games in two days is experience you can’t get in a regular summer league.”