Star-Studded Charity BBall Game To Benefit Hill Foundation A Success

Good times are made great when they’re for a great cause, and that may never have been more the case than last night at the Ron Palmer Pavilion, when LB Poly football Hall of Famer Tony Hill launched the Leroy and Bernice Hill Academic Athlete Fund with a star-studded charity basketball game. A good-sized crowd paid to get into a charity event and ended up seeing an incredible game, which ended in an amicable 88-88 tie.

As you can see from the photo above, a number of big names turned out, from Hill and Snoop Dogg, who captained the two teams (the Cowboys vs. the Snoop All-Stars) to the Game and Terence Newman. The Game brought his best game, dropping 23 on the Cowboys, and Tony’s daughter Kelli Hill wowed the crowd as well as her fellow players, pouring in five of six shots from behind the arc, including four straight in the final period to pull the Cowboys back into the game. Afterward, she was named the game’s MVP.

Tony Hill opened the game by saying, “This is all about love of the community,” and from start to finish, that love was obvious. The amount of time and consideration put into the event by Hill and his family, especially daughters Kelli and Cassidy, made for an impressive event, with a sizeable turnout given that it was being held with little notice and on Grand Prix weekend. Hill said the event raised over $10,000 in scholarship money for Poly athletes.

Snoop also donated to the fund, and some of the money was disbursed at halftime to coach Carl Buggs, as he was given $1,000 from Snoop to pay for his team’s rings, after they won their state record fourth-straight title in March. Buggs and Hill actually knew each other, while Buggs was a student at Long Beach State and Hill was in his first season at Stanford—both were working for an oil company in Long Beach one summer, and cleaned up a spill together.

Afterward, Hill said the event was a fitting tribute to his mother and father, and that he was very pleased with the outcome. “And we’ll be back,” he said. “We put first annual on everything because we’ll definitely be back next year.”