Christmas isn’t just for opening gifts and sipping egg nog anymore. For the last two years it’s been about heated rivalries and basketball.
This Christmas will be no different.
Promoter Zaye Bines is bringing the Alumni Basketball game back this holiday season, in a new location and with two new teams. This year’s game will be played at Richmond Senior High School in Rockingham, N.C., and features alumni from Scotland, Hoke and Richmond counties as well as the reigning champion Marlboro County Bulldogs.
“You got to go big,” he said excitedly. “I wanted to bring it to North Carolina because that’s where I’m from and keep the big rivalries.”
Bines, a graduate of Scotland High School, said the Raiders have always been the Fighting Scots biggest rivals. But he couldn’t leave Marlboro County out.
“They beat us two years in a row, so I was trying to find a way to incorporate Marlboro, so that’s why I added another county so they could play.”
The event started in 2021 at Marlboro County High. The game began as a group of alumni wanting to get together and play during the holidays. It blossomed into a packed event that draws people in to see old friends and classmates while visiting family during the Christmas season.
There will be entertainment at halftime and a kids game kicks off the event.
“People around the holiday times, it not a lot to do and this gives people a chance to come home and connect with people they haven’t seen in a while.”
And then there are the bragging rights. Bines said when he started the event he had no idea it would be so popular.
Tickets are available through Eventbright.com and he urges attendees to log on and grab their tickets now because the game is expected to sell out.