Moving the Cochrane Classic Basketball Tournament to a December time slot has reinforced the commitment to the whole idea of the event.

Just recently completing its 10th edition, the Classic was moved from January to ensure St. Timothy's High School could participate, explains creator Doug Jensen. From day one, the ambition was to have all three local high schools involved and that became a reality four years ago. He wasn't about to let that slip away.

"The number one goal for me is to have all three schools involved and to build that bridge between the schools," says Jensen. "The kids know each other through other events in their lives and they love getting together and competing in this event, so I wanted to create that opportunity for them to compete against each other and cheer for each other and those types of things."

He truly appreciates how both the Bow Valley and St. Timothy high schools have come on board.

"It's great working with those guys at both schools," says Jenson. "They're always trying to make the tournament better and make improvements. Every edition is better than the last. They've all bought into the philosophy and it's fun working with them."

The Classic has always been held in January but the Calgary Catholic School Division has placed a tournament blackout for the first few weeks of January due to their exam schedule. Now, it's likely to remain a December tournament, says Jensen.

"At end of the basketball season we'll talk about dates but I can't see moving back to January."

The basketball tournament includes eight teams in each of the junior and senior boys and girls divisions. The junior teams kick it off on the Thursday night before the seniors dominate the daytime play at all three high school gymnasiums.

The idea has been to invite teams who would give stiff competition to local teams to help them with their development and that has meant several 4A teams have been part of the weekend over the years.

Not so much this time around, though. With the Cochrane High School hosting the provincials in March they focused on bringing in tough 3A competition. Now Jensen believes they may continue to invite predominately 3A teams.

"There was lots of great basketball, lots of close games this year. It probably was one of the most competitive years we've had. We're hosting 3A provincials in March so we wanted to limit the invites to 3A schools and I think we're kind of going to do that in the future as well. It really didn't change the quality of the basketball and it seemed to make the games a lot more competitive than in years past."