For six days each December, 26 or so teams – packed with some of the best young talent in the world – turn Bishop Verot High School and Fort Myers into the capital of prep basketball. We call it the Culligan City of Palms Classic. But how do we select the teams?

 

For the most part, it is the most exacting of inexact sciences. Hundreds, perhaps even thousands of hours of reading, consulting and attending events during the high school and travel seasons leads to the “moment of decision” – which, much like cutting an NFL team down to 53 players, often comes down to a gut feeling.

 

Jayson Tatum and Chaminade (St. Louis, Mo.)? Easy call.

 

Coach Dawn McNew’s young Lehigh squad, coming off a 26-2 season in which it seemed as if everyone was a freshman or sophomore? Easy call.

 

But two unofficial “rules” are perhaps more important than all else:

 

We will not be obsessed with being the best high school basketball tournament in America (although we often are anyway). We WILL, however, be obsessed with being the most interesting. This results in players like one-handed Zach Hodskins in 2013, teams from abroad or even Lone Peak (Highland, Utah), which became the darling of the 2012 City of Palms but wasn’t anything close to that when they were invited more than a year earlier.

 

Simply put, we had never played host to anyone from Utah, and they were good. So the Knights were

in. While it is not the primary goal, finishing the process with a geographically diverse field is an important part of the process.

 

In other words, spread it around. Our 2015 field will have teams from Alabama, California, Georgia, Missouri, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Tennessee and, of course, Florida. Even within the Sunshine State, a typical City of Palms field includes the best overall team from South Florida, Central Florida and Southwest Florida.

 

But in the land of no absolutes, we might also find ourselves with an all-Kentucky championship game or even two teams from the same city.

 

Then, when we’re almost finished, we add Kevin Boyle. (Just kidding.) The nationally recognized Montverde Academy coach will make his 15th appearance in a City of Palms this December. That’s almost half of the tournaments since our “modern era” began in 1985. Boyle has coached in 50 City of Palms games – and kept coming back, even while never winning a championship until his 10th try (he now has three titles).

 

The Boyle/COP connection began in 1992, when a young coach, struggling to build a program at St. Patrick (Elizabeth, N.J.), brought his then-unheralded team to the Harborside Convention Hall. But the Celtics quickly became a national power, and Boyle became a Fort Myers fixture. By the time he moved south to Montverde and began his current streak of three national championships, he was basically an annual visitor.

 

Kevin Boyle or Mater Dei’s Gary McKnight are important parts of any City of Palms Classic, but they are the exception and not the rule.

 

We seldom take defending champions and discourage many teams who want to return immediately. Yes, we want them back, but more often, we want them back with a group of 15 new faces. This nudges coaches toward taking kids to different places during their high school careers – and it opens as many spots as possible for new faces in Fort Myers.

 

A little “left” to go with our “right.” Some “up” to offset our “down.” Great team or star player, man-to-man or zone, push the pace or slow it down, we really don’t care, as long as we have a little of everything.

 

That’s what makes the perfect high school holiday tournament.