This year’s Frank Spencer Holiday Classic is the 46th of the modern era and the 71st overall, as coaches and administrators begin to strategically plan for the 100th anniversary of the storied tournament in 2026. It remains the premier platform for Winston-Salem Forsyth County schools and area rivals to compete for annual basketball bragging rights between Christmas and the anniversary of Spencer’s passing. During the third quarter of the century and one year following Spencer’s death on New Year’s Eve 1973, the Frank Spencer Holiday Classic returned in much the same form it exists today. The number of gymnasiums in the region swelled from a dozen to 300+ during the first phase of Frank Spencer’s holiday classic, largely because of his relentless advocacy for the sport he cared so deeply about. But the tournament was more than entertainment and competition to Spencer, whose event predated by a decade the introduction of basketball into the Olympics in 1936 in Berlin. In the final year of its first incarnation, 158 teams played over a month to determine a champion before cumulative crowds approaching 30,000. Over the next 25 years, 25,000+ players played in 1900+ games in an event that embraced 22 counties to the north and west of Winston-Salem. Spencer, the eventual Sports Editor of The Winston-Salem Journal & Sentinel, placed his passion for the game into motion in 1926 and the Northwest North Carolina Basketball Tournament was born. Through the second quarter of the 20th Century, the high school basketball event Frank Spencer created at age 20 was “the world’s largest sports tournament” according to Ripley’s Believe It Or Not, the Google-size authority of the day on such things.
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