By Bill Reynolds
La Conner Community News
It’s always the goal of La Conner basketball teams to win championships in Spokane, site of the Washington State 2B Hardwood Classic each March.
A quartet of La Conner youth hoops players has now met that standard before entering middle school.
Greyson Delage, Roman Harper, Cash Landworth and Randall Reynolds last weekend won their bracket of the Spokane Hoopfest Three-on-Three Outdoor Basketball Tournament, the largest event of its kind in the world.
The La Conner boys, who will enter fifth grade in the fall, played nine games in two days, winning all but one of those matchups. They had to twice defeat the team that handed them their lone Hoopfest loss, in back-to-back fashion on Sunday, to prevail in their 16-team division.
The local team plays in various tournaments through the year as part of the nonprofit La Conner Future youth basketball program. This was the fourth Hoopfest for the bracket victors, who played six Sunday contests.
“Hoopfest is the premier tournament and that championship T-shirt means everything,” said Joe Harper, the team’s coach. This is something that these boys will remember forever.
“They worked their way out of the loser’s bracket to win it all,” stressed Harper, a former La Conner High girls head coach who led the Braves to a fourth place state championship finish at Spokane in 2023.
“All the boys contributed to the run,” Harper said of Sunday’s grueling slate. “Greyson had an overtime winner and a free throw to win a game as time expired. We squeezed by a few times.”
In all, five La Conner teams entered the 2026 Spokane Hoopfest field, which drew over 6,000 teams that played on 450 courts spanning nearly 50 city blocks.
A trio of incoming La Conner eighth graders — Andrew Pena, Teddy Jones, and Gabe Edwards — placed second in their bracket despite playing without a sub.
Incoming sixth graders Harrison Alvord, Quinton Kuhlman, and Elliott Moga joined fifth grader Kyler Kelley to compete in another bracket. Incoming high school freshmen Emmitt Alvord and Nolan Elde and sophomores-to-be Mia Delage and Sophia Edwards comprised a fourth La Conner youth team at Spokane.
A team led by La Conner High boys’ head soccer coach Galen McKnight entered a Hoopfest adult division.
“All our La Conner teams played well and competed at a high level,” Harper said afterward. “I would really like to see more La Conner youth teams next year, both boys and girls.”
Bill Reynolds is a general assignment reporter for La Conner Community News.
