Sask. 1-day provincial high school basketball championships tipping off in Moose Jaw Saturday

Saskatchewan's top high school basketball players will get a chance to finish out their 2024 season this weekend, but not in the way that was originally planned.

The Saskatchewan High School Athletic Association (SHSAA) is hosting a one-day provincial basketball championship Saturday in Moose Jaw.

The event is a compromise organized after the cancellation of Hoopla, the annual provincial championship tournament, due to the ongoing contract impasse between the provincial government and the Saskatchewan Teachers' Federation (STF).

The STF announced earlier in the week that teachers would not participate in extracurricular events Thursday and Friday, meaning Hoopla couldn't go on. Students and community members protested across the province this week to save the tournament, but the STF and the government did not reach any sort of agreement and continued to blame each other for the cancellation.

The job action is nto in effect Saturday, so organizers were able to put together the one-day replacement.

For Saturday's event, each team that qualified for Hoopla was invited to play one game, with pairings determined by what seeding would have been if Hoopla had happened.

The games are taking place across four schools in Moose Jaw today.

The SHSAA released this schedule for Saturday's tournament. (SHSAA)

Saskatchewan teachers have been without a contract since August. Bargaining on a new contract remains at a standstill as both sides refuse to budge on the issues of class size and complexity.

The STF has said it will return to the table if the government agrees to negotiate on these issues or go to binding arbitration on them. The government has remained adamant that these issues should be dealt with at the school board level, not in the teachers' contract.