Organization Key to Putting Together Tournaments : Basketball: Hard-working people, along with a year of planning and preparation produce some of the county’s most successful, creative events.

Dave Zirkle didn’t write the book on how to successfully organize, promote and operate a high school basketball tournament, but his expertise in directing the Orange Holiday Tournament for six years helped him earn a master’s degree in educational administration.

Zirkle, athletic director at Orange High School, once gave a 90-minute presentation, complete with a 6-foot floor chart, at National University in Irvine that touched upon organizing, budgeting and promoting a tournament as well as detailing the job responsibilities of the workers right down to the cheerleaders.

Zirkle’s expertise has helped turn the Orange Holiday Tournament, which opens next Tuesday for the 25th season, into one of the most successful of the 17 boys’ varsity events scheduled each December throughout the county.

The tournaments, which allow competing schools to play three or four games within a week, have become showcases for the county’s best players and provide coaches an opportunity to get some seasoning and experience before entering league competition.

Generally, a tournament can be categorized into three groups based on its organization and planning, the facility where the games are played, the strength of the teams it attracts and the amount of ticket sales and interest it generates.

The Orange Holiday Tournament and Ocean View’s Tournament of Champions are the county’s elite tournaments. The Orange tournament, held at Chapman College’s Hutton Sports Center, traditionally attracts the county’s best teams the day after Christmas.

The tournament, a profitable business venture that is a year in the making, generates an average of $4,000 in ticket sales for each of its four days.

“The bottom line is that you have to be organized and surround yourself with hard-working people,” Zirkle said. “I’ve tried to promote a tournament in which the players and the coaches feel special. I organize everything, but I have a lot of others who help pull it off.”

The Tournament of Champions finished its second season in Huntington Beach after founder Bob Espinosa, San Dimas athletic director, turned the prestigious tournament over to Ocean View Coach Jim Harris when crowds began to dwindle at Cal Poly Pomona.

For the past 18 years, the tournament has featured such players as Michael Cooper, David Greenwood, Bill Laimbeer, Ben McDonald, Mark Acres, John Williams and Tony Gwynn.

Since moving to Ocean View, interest in the tournament has been revived with Mater Dei and Long Beach Poly attracting a near-capacity crowd last Saturday for the championship game.

“We’ve tried to give the tournament an ambiance with banners, flags, two canopy entrances and spotlights on the gymnasium,” said Roy Englebrecht, the tournament’s executive director. “We wanted to give the fans a steak and the sizzle. I didn’t want this to be just another high school tournament in another high school gym.”

The second echelon of tournaments groups competitive teams in an evenly matched structure and generates a modest profit from ticket and concession sales. The Coast Christmas tournament at Estancia High and the Irvine World News Tournament, scheduled at various sites throughout the city of Irvine, are the most successful of this group.

The Coast Christmas tournament was inaugurated five years ago when officials of Estancia’s athletic department grew tired of repeatedly drawing Mater Dei in the first or second round of the Orange Holiday Tournament.

The tournament has earned a solid reputation with balanced fields. Over the past three years, the top-seeded team has won only two games and four different teams have claimed titles.

“We don’t have any Mater Deis entered, and any of 11 different teams could win the championship,” said Tim O’Brien, Estancia coach and tournament director. “It’s a healthy environment when so many teams have a chance to win.”

The Irvine World News Tournament, the county’s largest with 24 teams this year, is a unique event that combines forces from the city’s community services, three high schools, two colleges and a local newspaper.

The tournament has been profitable every year, and director Chuck Reid said he expects to show another gain this season despite drawing only 400 fans last Saturday at Christ College Irvine for the championship game between non-county schools San Bernardino and Compton.

“It was not the matchup we had hoped for, but we don’t structure the tournament to get any particular team into the finals,” Reid said. “We rarely have an Irvine team seeded into the top four. When we expanded, we knew this could become a double-edged sword and possibly hurt our crowds with out-of-area teams.”

Then there’s the lower-echelon tournaments, which are loosely organized and essentially provide a gymnasium for the competing teams. The brackets are stacked to favor the host teams, the officiating is mediocre, attendance is sparse and interest is minimal.

Gene Campbell was director of the Garden Grove tournament for 13 years before accepting a job as assistant principal at Pacifica High this fall. He admitted he “tried to look out for the local teams” when he made the pairings for the tournament.

“I always felt the home team should have some success,” Campbell said. “Any coach who doesn’t tell you that isn’t giving you the straight scoop. Ideally I set it up so we got a win in the first round and hopefully had a chance to make it to the championship game.”

Last year, the top four teams in the Canyon tournament were matched against each other in the first round. Trabuco Hills Coach Rainer Wulf said he did not return this year after his team, which eventually qualified for the Division III state championship game, lost two straight games.

“What really bothered me is that they allowed officials to work games back-to-back, and that doesn’t happen anywhere else,” Wulf said. “They didn’t get quality officials, and then they let them work two games.

“When Canyon’s junior varsity team beat a varsity team (Valencia) in the first round in the other bracket last year, I got out of there (quick). That was very disheartening.”

Under Zirkle’s plan, everyone shares in the profits from the Orange Holiday Tournament.

The school’s varsity club is responsible for the concession stand that generates $5,000 annually, and in return, Zirkle gives the club $1,500 to $2,000 of the profits.

“They give a gift back to the school like the electronic scoreboard they bought for the softball team last year,” Zirkle said. “We also give them a day at Magic Mountain for all their work. Everyone comes out a winner.”

Parents and boosters serve as ticket-takers and security; Zirkle rewards them with $3,500 each year. The money is used to pay for the school’s sports banquets and stipends for assistant coaches.

Finally, Zirkle donates $1,000 each year to a local charity. This year’s recipient will be the earthquake victims in San Francisco.

“I grew up in Orange, and I wanted to give something back to the community,” Zirkle said.

Operating costs are $13,000 but more than half of the expenses are covered before the first ticket is purchased. Schools pay a $190 entry fee and a corporate sponsor, the Orange County Register, contributes $5,000 annually under a 10-year contract.

The tournament’s biggest payday came in 1984 when Mater Dei met Capistrano Valley in the championship game. Zirkle said 300 or 400 fans were turned away and ticket sales generated more than $5,000.

“It was the first year of the Freedom Bowl and I thought no one would show up,” Zirkle said. “We had so many people hanging around outside the gym, we sent someone out there every five minutes with an updated flash card to give them the score.

“Mater Dei is always a good draw, but when they left two years ago to travel to Atlantic City (N.J.), we didn’t have a significant dropoff in attendance.”

Zirkle has traditionally invited out-of-area teams from Oregon, Washington or Florida to compete in the Orange Holiday Tournament. This year, a school from Alberta, Canada, is entered. But the long distances can sometimes take their toll.

Three years ago, a highly regarded West Palm Beach team was entered, but the school’s top two players never made the trip. One told his coach that he was afraid to fly and declined to make the transcontinental flight. Another told his coach that he was afraid of earthquakes and stayed home.

“When the coach got here, he told me they left 42 points a game at home,” Zirkle said. “They never won a game.”

Real estate agents often use the term “curb appeal” when trying to sell a house, and that’s what Englebrecht had in mind when he began promoting the Tournament of Champions.

Englebrecht prepared for the Tournament of Champions by drawing on his seven years of work under Washington Redskins owner Jack Kent Cooke and Lakers owner Jerry Buss in promoting events at the Forum. The first order of business was to spruce up Ocean View’s gymnasium.

“It was a tough sell convincing the boosters that we needed to spend $6,000 on window dressing six months before the tournament,” Englebrecht said. “I’m sure there were plenty of parents who wondered if I could deliver.”

But Englebrecht made an impact his first year. Despite having only six months to prepare and drawing only 10 teams, the tournament drew a capacity crowd for the championship game between Mater Dei and Ocean View.

This year, the semifinals of the tournament were nationally televised by the cable network Sports Channel. It was the first high school double-header televised by the cable network.

The most talked about feature of the tournament, however, was Englebrecht’s innovative waitress service in which Ocean View’s cheerleaders catered to the fans in the stands. The plan allowed the cheerleaders to earn the funds to attend a camp while the fans never missed a minute of any game.

“I wanted the average fan to go to work the next day and say, ‘You won’t believe this, but I got waited on at a high school basketball game last night,’ ” Englebrecht said. “Again, something different.

“There are too many high schools doing things the same way they were done 30 years ago. They haven’t changed with the times. I officiate games at Laguna Beach, Estancia and Canyon. There’s nothing that separates those tournaments from any other high school tournament.

“So many high school players will never go on and play again. For those, this will likely be the biggest tournament they’ll ever play in. It should be special for them.”