A near capacity crowd showed up Friday for the 12th Annual Sunstroke All VI Hoop Classic held at the Ronald Charles Gymnasium on the Central High School Campus. It opened with the Celebrity game, which featured local entertainers, politicians, radio personalities and a couple of special guests of national street-ball prominence.
Randy “White Chocolate” Gill out of Washington, D.C. and Phillip “Hot Sauce” Chapman from Atlanta, Ga., are both prominent street balling stars and have been previously featured on ESPN’s And1 series. Each player was named captain of the two celebrity competing sides with White Chocolate captaining the Tim Duncan crew and Hot Sauce leading the Sunstroke squad.
The outcome of the game did not seem much of a factor to the fans, even though White Chocolate and the Tim Duncan team won 97-94. Gill, with a game-high 43 points, was named MVP, but it was how he scored that had the crowed laughing and cheering. His ball-handling ability, the way he made would be defenders looked silly, and his deft touch from beyond the arc was worth the price of admission.
As skillful as Gill was with the ball in his hands, Chapman was even better and quicker. He left many a defender, to the delight of the crowed, on their knees in his wake on his way to the basket, showcasing a plethora of moves that took him to national prominence on the mainland.
One could conclude that he was as good a ball handler, if not better than Gill, but Gill was better at making the players around him look great with his passing ability. The person that benefitted most from many of those passes was local high flyer and former Educational Complex basketball star, Wilson Ferrence, who combined with Gill for some highly entertaining, rim-rattling, alley-oop dunks that brought the crowd to its feet of occasions. This celebrity game could easily go down as one of the best to date.
Local artists did an outstanding job in entertaining the crowd at half time and in between events with Mixology out of St. Thomas really taking it to another level.
The skills Challenge, the 3-point shootout and the dunk contest would close out the night on a very high note and kept the fans on the edge of their seats to the very end.
The girls’ skills contest was won by Central High’s Melanesia Hendrickson, while the Educational Complex’s Amali Krigger won the boy competition.
Charlotte Amalie High School’s Kelsey De la Cruz sank 10 3-pointers in the finals to win the girls division of that event, and Jose Bultes of Central High took the boys.
In the highly anticipated dunk contest, Salim Ross of the Educational Complex Barracudas soared high above the rim and his competitors in winning that event.
The action continued Saturday night at the Ronald Charles Gymnasium with the high school All-Star Games that features the top high school basketball players, boy and girls, from St. Croix battling the best from St. Thomas and St. John.
