Georgia's young shooters leave their mark on the Elks Hoop Shoot

The Elks Hoop Shoot has been quietly turning ordinary school kids into focused competitors for nearly eighty years. It is a free-throw contest run entirely by volunteers through the local lodges of the Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks, and it has produced some of basketball's sharpest stories. In the state of Georgia alone, dozens of children each year step up to the line at gymnasiums and church halls, chasing a path that runs from school level all the way to a national final.

Most Australians would not have heard of the contest. Basketball here is usually framed through the NBL and the Boomers rather than grassroots charity competitions. Even so, the spirit is recognisable to anyone who has watched a Saturday morning stadium where mums line up eskies and dads coach from the sideline. There is something universal about a kid flicking a wrist and watching the ball spin.

This piece follows the winners from Georgia, looks at how the state structures its pathway, and compares the experience with what young shooters might recognise closer to home in places like Melbourne or Townsville.

The contest and how it began

The Hoop Shoot started in 1946 in Kentucky, born from a simple idea that children who practised free throws would build habits that stayed with them for life. Three age groups compete, boys and girls separately, and every participant shoots twenty-five free throws. Ties are settled by sudden-death rounds until the closest possible scores are separated. There is no cost to enter, which sets the contest apart from the travel-heavy elite circuits that have spread through junior basketball in the United States and Australia alike.

Each lodge hosts a local contest, lodge winners advance to a district shoot, district champions go to a state finals weekend, and the state champions then represent their home in the national competition held each spring. The national winner receives an invitation to be honoured during NCAA Final Four weekend, where the television cameras usually find them. Past national winners include a number of names that quietly populate college rosters, even if most never reach professional heights.

For a family watching from a small town, the contest gives structure to a winter that might otherwise blur into cold afternoons and noisy pick-up games. The rules are clear, the gear is minimal, and the path to something bigger is genuine. None of that has changed, even as scholarship pipelines have grown more crowded and national recruiting has gone digital.

How the Georgia pathway is organised

Georgia runs its competition through more than one hundred and fifty Elks lodges scattered across the state, from mountain towns in the north to coastal communities near Savannah. Counties are grouped into districts, and each district runs its shoot in late autumn. From there, the calendar narrows quickly. A state-wide weekend, held most years in a mid-sized city with reliable gym access, decides who represents the Peach State at the national level.

Anyone familiar with how Cricket Australia organises its junior pathways or how Basketball Queensland runs its regional championships will spot a familiar pattern. Volunteers drive the bus between venues, regional managers coordinate kit and trophies, and the local connection matters as much as raw skill. A child who can sink eighty per cent of free throws under fluorescent lights at their local school gym still has to handle the bigger gym, the longer warm-up, and the unfamiliar faces at the state weekend.

The state finals typically draw a couple of hundred competitors and their families over a busy February weekend. If you wanted to work out when the next national tournament lands so you could plan a holiday around it, the counting the days calendar helps sort out the moving pieces.

Standout winners from Georgia

Georgia has produced a steady stream of national-level success over the decades. Boys and girls who began their routines on cracked bitumen courts have gone on to compete in college programs, and a few have worn college jerseys at the highest level of the NCAA tournament. Coaches and parents tend to remember the state winners rather than the absolute top finishers, because those are the kids who carried their region's flag on the biggest stage.

What stands out in the records is the variety of backgrounds. National winners from Georgia include children from large public schools and tiny private academies alike. Some came from athletic families where a parent had been a college player, while others had never touched a basketball until a teacher mentioned the contest at assembly. The contest levels the field in a way that more developed circuits often struggle to manage.

That breadth sits comfortably with the way junior sport functions in Australia. Junior cricket in suburban Adelaide or netball in country Victoria often produces national representatives from backgrounds that do not match the elite club pathway. The Elks competition achieves something similar, simply because almost every town with an active lodge has an entry point.

Australian parallels and differences

Australians tend to discover the contest through American television during March Madness, when the national winners are sometimes shown on the big screens at half-time. The exposure is small, but it is enough to spark curiosity. Coaches who follow college basketball closely will recognise the Hoop Shoot as the same kind of pipeline feeder that exists in a softer form through state associations here.

The structure, however, is not identical. Australian junior basketball relies on associations, representative programs, and a national grading system that tracks players across under-12 to under-18 levels. There is no volunteer-led charity competition with the same reach. The closest local equivalent would be a school-based knockout shoot-out run by a Rotary club or a school sport association, but nothing operates at the same scale or with the same national broadcast moment.

Feature Elks Hoop Shoot Australian junior pathways
Age divisions 8-9, 10-11, 12-13 Under-12 to Under-18 grades
Entry cost Free for all Association membership fees
Governing body Elks lodges and volunteers State associations and Basketball Australia
Progression Lodge to district to state to national Club to association to state to national
National showcase NCAA Final Four weekend NBL-aligned national championships
Travel support Self-funded, with local help Variable, often self-funded

For a child in Brisbane or Hobart who can rattle off a string of free throws, the Elks Hoop Shoot is not an option unless the family relocates. What is transferable, though, is the discipline. Training for free throws in a quiet suburban gym three nights a week is a habit that translates to any country.

Community impact and lodge culture

The Elks lodges across Georgia treat the Hoop Shoot as one of their centrepiece programs, alongside scholarships and veteran support. Lodge members often coach the local shoot, host the families, and contribute small prizes. A look at the Georgia lodge architecture across the state reveals buildings that double as community halls, wedding venues, and Saturday-morning basketball gyms.

For many of these children, the experience of stepping into a lodge for the first time and hearing the rules read aloud is itself a lesson in civic life. They learn that organisations run by volunteers can offer real opportunities, and they meet people three and four times their age who take the work seriously. In an era when junior sport is increasingly professionalised, the lodge contest retains a softer, more neighbourly feel.

Australian families might recognise this through surf lifesaving clubs or Country Women's Association branches, where the volunteer muscle is just as strong, even if the activity is different. The Hoop Shoot sits in a similar cultural pocket. It gives small towns a reason to gather around a competition that costs almost nothing and means a great deal to those involved.

Suggestions for families following the contest