IHSA's March Madness -- Boys Tournament

America's Original March Madness!

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Boys Tournament

Peoria Journal Star Jump Ball Jamboree Back for 11th Year!

Team Rosters
Game Schedules (pdf file)

The chance to play basketball in Peoria on one of the three full-sized center courts of the March Madness Experience™ will be made available again to more than 800 grade school and junior high students when the Journal Star Jump Ball Jamboree gets under way for the ninth straight year.

Essays regarding sportsmanship written by the students in the different grades will be used to determine the participants in this year's competition. The winning essays will be displayed at the March Madness Experience™, in editions of the Journal Star, and on the Internet at the Journal Star's web site.

Sponsored by the Peoria Journal Star newspaper, it will be conducted as an Experience of the sport's highest ideals among the next generation of players. Participating teams, coaches, players and fans must demonstrate good sportsmanship with their honesty, integrity, loyalty, self-restraint, respect for each other and their opponents, fair play and excellence. They compete for the love of the sport. They win without boasting, lose without excuses. They respect and accept the decisions of officials.

Each of the students playing in the Jamboree will receive a commemorative T-shirt recognizing their participation.

The Journal Star Jump Ball Jamboree will feature grade school teams from the newspaper's circulation area, representing fifth through eighth graders, boys and girls, each weekend. The basketball exhibitions will be played in two 15-minute halves with a running clock. Each team will be limited to 12 players on the roster and every player must see action each half. Members of the Peoria Officials Association (POA) have volunteered to referee the exhibitions for the ninth straight year.

The games will be played Thursday evening, Friday and Saturday on either the Ameren Center Court, the Caterpillar Center Court or the Prairie Farms Center Court in the Exhibit Hall of the Peoria Civic Center. Once the teams have been selected, the schedule will be drawn and published in the Journal Star. (It will also be on the IHSA Web Site (www.ihsa.org).

Participating teams will be selected in the following manner:

1) On or before the entry deadline of Friday, January 11, 2008, students submit an essay in 500 words or less on how the nominated team's players, coaches and fans have exhibited good sportsmanship this season. No team will be selected without submitting an original essay.

2) The school principal must sign the nominating essay.

3) Only one nominating essay per school team will be accepted, but a school may submit an essay for every team in the school.

4) The essays will be accepted only by e-mail [krude@pjstar.com]

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