The basketball court at Riverview Collegiate was busy throughout the day on Saturday all for a good cause.

The inaugural Hoops for Hunger charity basketball event took over for a day filled with basketball and raising funds for Hunger in Moose Jaw.

Over $2,700 in total was raised during the first-time event, which saw players from the Thunder and Baller Boys basketball club, and Riverview basketball teams hit the court over the course of ten hours.

“It went fantastic,” said Curt Lorge, coach with the Thunder and Royals. “We had a great turnout of kids and some of them ended up playing basketball for eight, ten hours over the course of the day, so there was tired girls by the end of the day.

“I’ve been involved with a lot of days of basketball, this was one of my favourite days of basketball.”

Players from grades 6-9 hit the court, as well as some alumni from the Thunder program. The highlight of the day however was the parent game, which saw the parents take on the players.

Overall, the day was about giving back at an important time of the year when taking a full day out to spend in a basketball gym might not be high on the list of priorities.

“It was awesome, meeting a lot of new people and some of the Thunder girls, it was really great,” said Brianna Seiferling, a senior at Riverview, who took part in the event and helped with the fundraising.

“My dad proved me wrong, we said we were going to be them and they beat us pretty bad, but it was just a great day.”

Lorge said he’s really proud of how his players bought into organizing the event and went out to raise the funds for Hunger in Moose Jaw on their own.

“Seeing the work that the boys and girls to raise that money, it wasn’t on the parents, some of them were going door-to-door collecting for this cause and to have them do that at this age is really amazing,” said Lorge.

The hope is for the event to become an annual occurrence and Lorge added that they’re hoping they can get more of the local basketball teams on board and make it a showcase of all levels of basketball in the city.

“That sense of community that we had, it was just a really important weekend and I hope we can keep going at it every now,” said Lorge.