The inaugural Oregon Middle School Basketball Championship apparently only scratched the surface.

The tournament, made up of middle school teams from around Oregon, will tip off Saturday with 64 girls teams in two days of competition at gyms in Redmond and Sisters. Then on March 15-16, 122 teams of boys — who, like the girls, are all in grades five through eight — will convene in Central Oregon.

With 186 teams, the Oregon Middle School Basketball Championship has nearly doubled from the 106 teams that played in the first tournament held last March.

For 49-year-old Bend resident Bill Reinking, the founder of the event, the growth has been staggering.

“There really is nothing like this for youth basketball,” says Reinking, who was a telecommunications consultant before becoming the full-time tournament director before this year’s event. “There is with Pop Warner (football) and with Little League (baseball/softball). That’s what is driving these things to sell out is that coaches love to have that championship at the end of the year and hold that out as a goal for the kids during the regular season.”

The tournament is made up of teams from middle school basketball leagues , such as the Central Oregon Basketball Organization , that are made up of teams of younger players organized by the high school program for which they are zoned.

And to give the tournament a championship feel, not every middle school team can play in the tournament.

To be eligible to participate, each team must advance through a qualifying tournament or finish among the leaders in its own league standings.

That has helped draw some of the better teams in the state to the Central Oregon tournament, once they found out about it.

“It’s just a very natural extension for whatever existed at the high school level (with state championships),” says Keary Lee, a coach with and president of West Linn Youth Basketball.

Ultimately, Lee credits word of mouth for the state championship tournament’s rapid growth.

“My group went over there and had a great experience last year,” he says. “I think folks that went over there last year have come back from that and are telling other school teams, coaches and parent, ‘Hey, you need to do this.’”

Craig Reid, director of COBO and head coach of the Mountain View High boys basketball team, also praises the tournament.

After all, it is not often that a Central Oregon athletic team gets to stay home for a high-level tournament of any kind.

“It’s exciting for the kids and it is good to have an opportunity like that for the Central Oregon kids to be local and not have to travel,” Reid says.

Reid hopes that as the tournament grows the depth of talent will grow as well. He also added that not having the middle school tournament coincide with the OSAA state high school basketball championships would be beneficial to both the coaches and the players.

“If they can continue to draw stronger competition and make it a true state championship then it will be great,” Reid adds. “The stronger the field gets, the better, and it is going to take some time. But I think Bill has done a great job.”

Reinking has wasted no time in spreading his concept.

Later this month the inaugural “state championships” will be held in Washington and Northern California.

The Washington tournament, slated for next weekend in Spokane, has already sold out, Reinking says.

“It is exciting,” says Reinking, who serves as tournament director for all three state events. “It’s going to be a huge challenge. Our limited resources locally are pretty tapped out.”

The first girls games of the Oregon tournament are set for Saturday morning, and each team in both the girls and boys divisions will play four games during their respective weekends. Each team is entirely made up of a single grade and winners will be determined by grade in both gold (larger schools) and silver (smaller schools) divisions.

Twenty-four boys and girls teams from Central Oregon are scheduled to take part, and in many cases, Central Oregon Basketball Officials Association officials will call the games.

That leaves the vast majority of the teams — whose rosters average about 10 players in addition to coaches and family — to travel to Central Oregon.

Says Reinking: “The whole driver for the interest on behalf of the coaches and families is that the kids get to play other teams that they typically wouldn’t otherwise.”

— Reporter: 541-617-7868,

zhall@bendbulletin.com.