FREDONIA — Local high school basketball players got a taste of what it’s like to be a college athlete Monday at Dods Hall on the campus of Fredonia State University.

The college hosted the inaugural Martin Luther King Jr. Day High School Showcase, which featured boys and girls basketball teams from Western New York and beyond experiencing a day in a college athletics setting.

“The whole idea behind it is to bring people together, to expose them to something that growing up in rural America, I wasn’t exposed to,” said Jerry Fisk, Fredonia State University director of athletics. ” … The awe of stepping into the gym or the locker rooms, it’s just a different experience. That’s a really fun thing for the kids to get to experience.”

The tournament came together over the course of well over a year of planning. Behind the support of Fredonia State University President Dr. Stephen H. Kolison Jr., Fredonia State men’s basketball coach Sean Smiley and Fredonia State women’s basketball coach Sarah Cartmill began to reach out to coaches well in advance to schedule this year’s inaugural event.

“We reached out through our coaches to see who might need a game. It’s not always easy for the initial get to bring teams in, because you schedule so far in advance,” Fisk said. ” … It took a lot of massaging and work on our coaches’ behalf to get things lined up.”

Teams from Chautauqua County including Fredonia, Jamestown, Maple Grove and Westfield competed, but so did teams like Nichols and Tapestry from the Buffalo area, Northeast Prep in Rochester, and even as far as Allderdice from Pittsburgh.

Plans for the tournament also originally had teams from as far as the SPIRE Institute in Geneva, Ohio, set to compete, but to remain a sanctioned event, nonsanctioned teams could not compete without making their opponent ineligible for state-sanctioned tournaments.

“In talks with our coaches, we had wanted to host a showcase and we know that Martin Luther King Jr. Day is a day that other areas hold a showcase. … It certainly was a learning process this time,” said Fisk. “This showcase, where we have teams from Rochester, from Buffalo and from Pittsburgh was a new and different experience. It was a learning process, but it’s exciting to have people from out of town come to see what we’re doing here at Fredonia.”

Fisk believes now that the work to get the ball rolling this year has been done, the showcase will continue in future years.

“Now that we’ve done it, I think we will have more success trying to duplicate it,” Fisk said. “We’ve had conversations with teams from Cleveland, teams from Syracuse, and I think next year you might see more teams from outside the region come in for the showcase.”

Jamestown varsity girls coach Ken Ricker, a former college coach himself at Jamestown Community College after his stint as the Dunkirk Marauders girls coach, appreciates the opportunity for his players to be included in the area’s biggest showcases for high school athletes.

“It’s really cool. We’re really lucky at Jamestown being the largest school in the county, we get invited to a lot of cool things,” Ricker said. “We feel really good to be a part of these things. It’s cool for the kids to have something unique, to be on a college campus. That’s big for our kids, whether they are ninth-graders or 12th-graders, to be on these college campuses and get a feel for what it’s like here. I think it’s great for Fredonia State and for us.”

The showcase is the latest in a long list of high school sporting events held at Fredonia State. Earlier this winter sports season, the CCAA-ECIC Challenge tipped off the high school basketball season. In the fall, multiple soccer games were held on the college’s soccer fields, including Fredonia’s girls soccer Senior Night against Dunkirk. In the past, sectional playoff baseball and softball games have been held at the college, as well.

Speaking to the university’s support of high school athletics, Fisk said, “I think it’s important. We have the support of campus, especially from Dr. Kolison, our president. He thinks it’s important to get community engagement on campus and we in the Athletics Department support that, as well. It’s fun to see our facilities used by local teams and regional teams that come in and experience a college court or a college field.”

For outdoor events, the host school pays a fee to use the fields to cover the cost of officials, staffing and field maintenance. For events at Dods Hall like Monday’s showcase, schools are invited without charge, with gate revenue at the gym entrance covering the cost.

“We really want it to be something that works for all of us,” Fisk said. “As long as we can cover our expenses, these don’t need to be money-making endeavors.”

With many renovations in recent years to improve the facilities at Dods Hall, Fredonia State views these events as not only a way to foster a relationship with the community, but also as a possible recruiting tool for the university.

“We’re just excited to have people on campus. Since I’ve been here, we’ve done a lot of work at Dods Hall,” Fisk said. “We’ve really got a place that we like to showcase. It’s fun to get our facilities that we’re proud of exposed to these high school student-athletes, who get the chance to experience them.”

Whether it was to recruit or to show off the facilities, Monday was just another example of how Fredonia State has used its position in the community to give high school student-athletes a memory to look back upon.

“These things are so much fun,” Fisk said. “Seeing kids step in the gym and start looking around, that’s what it’s all about.”