Another high-profile sporting event is coming to the Limestone City.
Kingston and Queen’s University will host the 2020 U15 and U17 boys National Basketball Championships, with tip-off set for early August. The head coach of the Queen’s men’s basketball team, Stephan Barrie, says the event will bring the cream of Canadian crop to town.
“For people to get an idea of how good it’s going to be, you have to think about guys like Tristan Thompson and Cory Joseph who are in the NBA,” Barrie said.
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A big selling point for the bid was the fact the teams involved won’t have to leave the Queen’s campus once they get to Kingston.
They’ll play, they’ll practice and they’ll even be able to have their meals at the school — very much a one-stop destination. Barrie says the facilities at Queen’s are second to none.
Megan Knott is the executive director of Kingston Accommodation Partners, and also spoke to the facilities.
“They can sit over 1,200 spectators in that facility, which is fantastic, plus it’s just state of the art,” Knott said. “Some teams want to play where the best venues are and so Queen’s has really facilitated that for us and that’s why we partnered with them.”
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After renovations to the former Phys-Ed Centre, now Mitchell Hall, the university can boast six gyms. Barrie says Queen’s hosts championships like nobody else and has shown that in the past with a lot of the U-Sport championships, and next year the school will do the same with the U15 and U17 tournaments.
The national championships run August 3 to August 8, 2020.