TULALIP, Wash. — Tulalip is getting ready to host thousands of basketball players for the Tulalip Indigenous March Madness basketball tournament next weekend.
For organizer Shawn Sanchey, the unit director of the Tulalip Boys and Girls Club, it’s a staple of his upbringing he wanted to bring back for the next generation.
“It got started, you could say, from a vision and a dream of just having the culture of basketball back in our Tulalip community,” Sanchey said.
Sanchey got it started five years ago with mostly teams from tribes and reservations in Western Washington. It’s now grown to 150 teams aged 1st grade through 12th grade coming to the North Sound community from as far as Nevada and California as the first tournament of the season for what player Davien Parks calls “Native Ball.”
“From rez-ball, native ball tournaments, I’ve met so many people,” Parks said. “They basically are reunions. Every tournament, I got to see the same folks and meet new folks, too.”
Parks, a senior at Marysville Heritage High School, won last year’s tournament. If his squad does it again this year, they’ll get a bid at the Native American Junior Nationals as the Tulalip tournament is now a qualifier for that event, which has become the largest Indigenous-only basketball tournament in the world.
“I think it’s important because a lot of Native youth don’t get any recognition,” said Matthew Moses, the coach for one of the participating teams. “It gives them a spotlight to be seen and then possibly be able to move on to the level after high school.”
For many players, Sanchey says, living in rural areas or smaller towns doesn’t give them the platform playing in more populated areas.
“Great athletes have came from Tulalip and all tribal communities, and I fell like that’s part of just our history and culture with each other is that it’s almost a pride thing, a representation thing,” Sanchey said.
Parks feels pride when he plays, saying he gives it his all to show what his community can do on the court.
“I go harder because I want to win against another person’s tribe because I want to show you Tulalip’s got the best ball players,” Parks said. " I want to prove my community, my rez creates the best ballers."
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