{"id":48,"date":"2008-03-20T13:02:46","date_gmt":"2008-03-20T18:02:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.libertystudentnews.com\/?p=1063"},"modified":"2008-03-20T13:03:04","modified_gmt":"2008-03-20T18:03:04","slug":"while-you-were-gone","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.libertystudentnews.com\/?p=48","title":{"rendered":"While you were gone"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span id=\"article_font\">With Liberty University on its Spring Break this week, more than 500 homeschooled basketball players from as far away as Austin, Texas, Brevard County, Fla., and Binghamton, N.Y., have invaded the campus for the 12th annual East Coast Basketball Championships.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>The 52-team event, which started Monday and concludes Friday, features 130 games in 13 divisions, ranging from middle school girls to varsity boys (five divisions).<\/p>\n<p>For the players, it\u2019s their version of the NIT, with last week\u2019s 300-team National Christian Homeschool Basketball Championships in Oklahoma City more like the NCAAs.<\/p>\n<p>The tournament is set up in a World Cup format, with pool play separating the 20 varsity boys teams into five four-team brackets for today\u2019s semifinals and Friday\u2019s championship games.<\/p>\n<p>This year\u2019s event originally had 72 teams from 12 states signed up, before 20 \u2014 mostly from Indiana, Illinois and Iowa \u2014 pulled out due to conflicts with Easter weekend festivities.<\/p>\n<p>There is no qualifying criteria for this year\u2019s event, an open invitational.<\/p>\n<p>But many of the teams are their state\u2019s champions and that could be a requirement in the future if the field becomes too large.<\/p>\n<p>The Greensboro Panthers and Baltimore Chargers are among the favorites in the varsity boys \u201c5A\u201d competition, along with the team from Texas, the Upstate (S.C.) Eagles and Lighthouse Christian (N.C.).<\/p>\n<p>The Lynchburg Patriots, a middle school-aged team, are the only local representative.<\/p>\n<p>Eleven of the championship games will take place at LU\u2019s Vines Center, with the other two \u2014 today\u2019s girls varsity Division A and 2A finals at 5:45 and 7:30 p.m. \u2014 moved to Liberty Christian Academy to give the Flames women a chance to practice before Saturday\u2019s NCAA opener against ODU.<\/p>\n<p>Besides renting LU\u2019s facilities, with access to 13 wooden floor courts, mostly in the LaHaye Center, Davis hired local high school referees from the Colonial Officials Association and football players from LCA to operate the clocks and the scoreboards.<\/p>\n<p>There is no admission fee for any of the games.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>With Liberty University on its Spring Break this week, more than 500 homeschooled basketball players from as far away as Austin, Texas, Brevard County, Fla.,&#8230;<\/p>\n<div class=\"more-link-wrapper\"><a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.libertystudentnews.com\/?p=48\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\">While you were gone<\/span><\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[4],"class_list":["post-48","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general","tag-features","entry"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pJcR0-M","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.libertystudentnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.libertystudentnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.libertystudentnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.libertystudentnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.libertystudentnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=48"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.libertystudentnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.libertystudentnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=48"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.libertystudentnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=48"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.libertystudentnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=48"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}