Students take to the court in Hoopapaluza

This year’s homecoming kicked off with a set of 3-on-3 basketball tournaments featuring students.

Kicking off homecoming week, Hoopapaluza lets students form their own 3-person basketball team to compete in the tournament. Alongside the basketball, students have a chance to win prizes in the raffle.

This year’s prizes included a 300 dollar Amazon shopping spree, tickets to a Nashville Predators game, court-side seats to a Lipscomb basketball game of the student’s choice, two CMA tickets and an Xbox. During the night, there was a paper airplane competition where the winner got five additional raffle tickets. The airplane to land the closest to the hula-hoop wins.

In an effort to get more student engagement, Lipscomb’s homecoming kickoff event switched from Lights Out to Hoopapaluza this year.

“While Lights Out was incredible, we wanted to do something that had more student engagement and was more student focused,” said Ellie Moen, vice president of Lippy Lunatics. “With Hoopapaluza we knew we could pair with Campus Recreation, get the basketball team and students involved to promote a student body that focuses on one another and feels like a family, athlete or not.”

One of the main focuses of Hoopapaluza is to bridge a gap between athletes and students and create a more family-like environment.

“Other schools have big, packed arena events where they bring everyone from the community in. It really feels like they are glorifying the athletes,” said Tyler Jorden, president of Lippy Lunatics. “Whereas at Lipscomb our athletes are just other students. It’s so special getting to see them interact with our student body.”

This year’s tournament winner was team “LAB” — Andrew Lunt, Alex Warren, and Andrew Eldridge — with runner-up “2 Time” consisting of Eli Warrix, Mason Swiggart, and Carter Gilbert. There were eleven teams in total who competed.

Homecoming will continue with Bison’s Week events, culminating in Bison’s Weekend and the men’s basketball home opener on Saturday, Nov. 15. The Bisons will take on the Bryan College Lions in Allen Arena at 4pm.

Photos taken by Madelyn Paul.