Another Peach Jam is in the books, and now the dozens of local workers, volunteers, staff and media who make the popular high school hoops event go can get a bit of a break — as will the poor, heavily beleaguered grass fields used for parking that surround the North Augusta Recreation Center.
More on that later.
But as for the Peach Jam itself, it’s an absolutely amazing event that I’ve had the privilege of covering two years in a row now, and I love it, not just for obvious reasons like the opportunities to cover some of the best high school hoops talent around while also watching the hobnobbing of NBA stars, league scouts and elite college basketball coaches.
But I’m particularly fond of this event because I love how it represents the Augusta area’s sports scene. Like the Masters, but on a much smaller scale, the Peach Jam offers the Augusta area another opportunity to show off to the nation some of what makes this a pretty awesome sports town for its size.
Kudos to the rec center folks for the work they do in putting on this event year after year. Filtering all those athletes, coaches and media members through the rec center space while also trying to manage parking, security of high-profile guests, etc., would be a logistical nightmare for someone like me. Yet, both years I’ve gone, I’ve seen what’s pretty much a seamlessly run event.
Parking is probably my only gripe, but even there, I imagine the staff is doing all it can with the limited space it has to work with. I do wish there were some other options to keep folks from parking in the grass fields given the unpredictable weather that hits this part of the South each summer.
Even when not forecasted, heat-of-the-day thunderstorms can pop up out of nowhere at any time, and if they linger, it can make for a muddy mess as I, along with several others who had to get help to get our cars unstuck from the soggy fields, discovered first-hand.
But even with that, the crews trying to help us navigate the parking were fantastic and super helpful, and they helped to add to what has, for me, always been a pleasant experience at the Nike EYBL Circuit’s finale event.
It, along with the Masters, are two larger-scale examples of what makes Augusta, I believe, one of the better small town sports scenes, at least in the Southeast. This past week at the Peach Jam, I talked with a couple of first-timers who were there to cover the event for a large media conglomerate, and both of them raved about how well-managed the event is, but also, the energy in the building as the top basketball prospects in the country vie for summer AAU basketball supremacy.
Other than the parking, the only other thing that created some anxious moments for me was the obviously increased strictness on media coverage. But honestly, I can’t even complain too much about that because I understand.
When you pile in a bunch of high-profile athletes from every level of a sport imaginable into one place, it becomes a magnet for all sorts of media types — legit and non-legit alike. And what I’ve discovered is that for every legit member of the media trying to gain access to an event like the Peach Jam, you’ve got probably two or three others who are just looking to be there for clout that enhances their personal brand.
It’s a commentary on how high school sports — once considered the last bastion of pure, for-the-love-of-the-game athletics — is not-so-slowly becoming just as financially lucrative as major college athletics.
Some may see it as a good thing, others may see it as a stain on society. I simply call it a natural progression. Whether you agree with it, like or not, it makes sense. If you’re going to make major college athletics a money grab, then why wouldn’t you expect something similar to happen at the level that produces the next great college athlete?
I fear now that the only places you’ll find that strictly for-the-love-of-the-game vibe in athletics are in NCAA’s Division II or perhaps Division III where financial scholarships aren’t awarded. Or maybe it’s the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics (NAIA), often referred to as the NCAA’s little brother.
You can’t even throw the junior colleges in there, because many of those athletes still have big-boy NCAA D-1 aspirations and use the JUCOs as an alternate route to get there.
And now that Name, Image and Likeness (NIL) money has become available to high school athletes, expect that drift toward big business sports to continue for high school athletics.
But that’s all a gripe for another day. Meanwhile, the end of the Peach Jam and the end of the Georgia High School Association dead week period signals the fast-approaching start to another year of high school sports in the CSRA.
With high school football kickoffs slated for the third week in August — and high school softball games commencing as early as Friday Aug. 4 — the school sports season will be back in full swing before we know it.
And in the Augusta area, that means many more opportunities, beyond events like the Peach Jam and The Masters, to enjoy all the athletic goodness this area has to offer. Let’s enjoy it while we can.
Gabriel Stovall is a freelance sportswriter and columnist for The Augusta Press. He can be reached at gabrielcstovall@gmail.com. Follow him on Twitter, Instagram and Threads: @GabrielCStovall.
