A Lawless Game

A+Lawless+Game

by Trevor LaVine, Print Editor-in-Chief

Eight of the best AAU Basketball teams in the northeast will gather at Roselle Catholic High School in Roselle, NJ this summer for a tournament with serious repercussions – not only for the athletes, but for one of Glen Rock’s own who has organized the event.

The Amateur Athletic Union (AAU) will host a showcase in which the teams will play each other in front of college coaches in the hope of players receiving scholarships. The AAU is a club sports organization that plays during the offseason of most regular high school sports.

Glen Rock high school senior, Pat Lawless, is running the tournament, which will take place on July 26th. He has teamed up with Roselle Catholic’s head coach and with Alex Kline, a Forbes acclaimed national basketball recruiting analyst, to make this tournament possible.

“[Kline] has over thirty thousand followers on Twitter,” said Pat, “So he’s very famous.”

Although he is still in high school, Pat is a National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) certified scout, meaning that he takes notes on the players and then sends them to colleges that may be interested in them. In order to run the tournament, he first needed to get the NCAA’s approval.

“I still have plenty to do; I’m talking to the NCAA tomorrow to get it certified,” said Pat. “Still there’s a lot of planning to do, concessions, all that [time-consuming] stuff.”

The tournament will, in addition to giving the players a chance to show their skills to the college coaches, raise money for The Mary Kline Classic, Alex Kline’s charity for cancer research. It will be called the Give N’ Go Basketball Invitational, after Pat’s sports website, www.givengobasketball.com . The website is a recruiting site, and it has articles on the top high school basketball players in the area.

“I’m hoping to get an internship over the summer with a larger basketball recruiting site,” said Pat. “In the business side of basketball.”