Do We Really Need Two Christmas “Classic” High School Basketball Tournaments in Bristol?

Marky Billson
15 min readOct 1, 2024

Why does the area think “townie” and not “cosmopolitan?”

I have never understood the Tri-Cites’ fascination with high school basketball.

I don’t know if it really exists. I think it may be more of an extension of the preferences of certain radio broadcasters and of the easy sell of getting a player’s family to pay for advertising to have the games broadcast, much the same way a family buys an ad in a high school football program reading “Good Luck Son.”

Personally, I have never listened to a high school basketball game on the radio for entertainment. I have listened on occasion because professionally I had to, and I can remember wanting to hear a talk show on WJCW only to hear a torturously drawn-out postgame show where an announcer read all the scorers of a 60–19 game, which promptly made me forget about the talk show and turn the dial.

But let’s face it, the fan base of high school basketball is basically that of high school students and the parents of the players.

So when I heard Arby’s was pulling their sponsorship of the longtime high school basketball tournament played after Christmas in Bristol’s Viking Hall, I was ecstatic.

Maybe now the area could focus on things like Major League Baseball Game coming to Bristol Motor Speedway, or the improvement of ETSU’s men’s basketball and football teams.

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