St. Mary will host Hoops 4 Hope basketball benefit

St. Mary will host the second “Hoops 4 Hope” event Friday and Saturday, a basketball festival featuring the two Oklahoma City Catholic high schools, St. Mary and Bishop McGuinness, matching up with Tulsa's two Catholic high schools, Bishop Kelley and Cascia Hall.

“It's been in the works for two or three years,” Hamilton said. “We started talking about incorporating the four schools into a basketball festival where not only do we get to showcase our teams but also provide assistance to Catholic Charities.”

The event started last year with Cascia Hall hosting and proceeds and donations going to Catholic Charities of Tulsa.

Next year, the event is scheduled to be hosted by Kelley before returning to Oklahoma City to be hosted by McGuinness in 2015.

This year's event starts at 10 a.m. Friday with mass at Sacred Heart Catholic Church, across the street from St. Mary at 2700 S Shartel.

After mass, the teams will load a truck, which will be sent to Catholic Charities, with supplies gathered from all four schools this week.

Each school has been asked to gather different items for donation this week.

“It gives the whole school an opportunity to either raise money or donate items that the charities need,” St. Mary boys coach Andy Fisher said. “That's one of the really cool things about this event, is it's not just the basketball team getting together to do this but we're getting the whole school involved.”