CLEVELAND, Tenn. — Chattanooga Steam AAU teammates John Hall and Clay Born will have plenty of opportunities to play against the top talent in the city once the 2011-12 high school basketball season tips off in November.
Yet, they couldn’t pass up an opportunity to play with that same talent.
The two are part of 100 players that came out this past week to Cleveland High School for tryouts for the Cleveland Rocky Top Fall League, which starts Saturday at Cleveland. There will be 10 teams with 10 players each, and the league will run five weeks, with a championship on October 9th at Maryville College.
The 100 players participating is a step up from the 64 that participated a season ago, which surprised coordinators Andre Whitehead and Jason McCowan.
“Ideally, you want the best 100 kids in the area, but we feel like we have a lot of excellent players participating this season,” Whitehead, who runs the website TnPrephoops.com and also does evaluating, said. “We didn’t even expect to have this many kids show up, but it’s good because the league is growing due to word of mouth.”