Reasons to Register Your Family for a Gus Macker Tournament

06.13.2017 | 3 min read

Girls playing basketball at Gus Macker tournment

When school ends and summertime begins, it can be tricky to keep children active. For many students, school provides easy opportunities to get involved with exercise, organized sports and extracurricular activities.

To help address this challenge, organizations like Gus Macker allow children and families to be active during the summer months.

Gus Macker is a 3-on-3 basketball tournament designed for any level of player, regardless of age, gender or experience. This allows the tournament to maintain an inclusive environment and keep ties to its roots of neighborhood pick-up games of driveway basketball.

Here are four reasons your family should consider registering for a Michigan Gus Macker event:

The whole family can be involved. Teams are divided into brackets based on their gender, age, height and experience, which you provide during registration. This allows the oldest and youngest members of your family to participate, as well as ones that may have never played basketball before. This is the perfect opportunity for children to learn how to play basketball, or further the skills they have.

Plenty of game time. Gus Macker ensures that you will play at least three scheduled games during the tournament by using a double elimination bracket with an additional “toilet bowl” bracket. This makes the tournament worth the price to participate and shows your child how to celebrate winning, as well as how to cope with losing a sporting event.

The benefits of playing outdoors. Playing basketball is not only a good way for your children to learn teamwork and social skills, but also allows them to be active. For each hour of playing basketball, you can expect to burn somewhere between 600 to 900 calories, depending on weight and intensity of the game. The majority of the Gus Macker tournaments are outdoors as well, which helps to increase vitamin D intake. In recent research, vitamin D has been shown to work against cancer, heart disease and depression. Photo credit: Maranda Doney, A Healthier Michigan

Teaching the importance of community. Gus Macker is all about building a community within the tournament and the cities it is in. By having children participate they are able to see the value in being part of a community and finding their passions. The idea of the Gus Macker tournament was built on the idea of passion for sports. Scott McNeal, the founder, created it in 1974 from playing driveway basketball at his parent’s house.

The Gus Macker season is already underway in Michigan. Check out some of the upcoming 2017 tournaments below: