Why We Built the National Prep Tournament — And What We're Doing Differently

Coach Lee DeForest

Director, Florida Coastal Prep Sports Academy · Host, National Prep Tournament

May 13, 2026

I want to tell you, honestly, why this tournament exists. Not the marketing version. The real one.

I've been coaching basketball for over 25 years — D1, D2, NAIA, JUCO, and now leading Florida Coastal Prep Sports Academy through our seventh year. In that time I've entered teams in dozens of prep tournaments, hosted clinics with hundreds of coaches, and watched the prep basketball tournament landscape change in ways most people outside the gym never see.

The National Prep Tournament is my attempt to build the tournament I'd want to enter my own teams in. This is the story of why, and what we're doing differently as a result.

The gap I kept running into

Over the years, when I went to enter teams in tournaments, I kept running into the same uncomfortable pattern. Tournaments are either:

1. The big-budget mega-event — great production, real college coach attendance, expensive entry, expensive travel, your kids play one good game and three blowouts in either direction because the bracket is too big to seed properly.
2. The "exposure tournament" — smaller, cheaper, marketed heavily on the "college coaches in attendance" claim that's almost never verified, often hosted by promoters with no coaching background.
3. The local league tournament — cheap, fun, but no real recruiting visibility because nobody's streaming and nobody outside the local market is paying attention.

None of these worked well for what my own program needed: competitive games, real production, real recruiting exposure through streaming, and a price that didn't bleed the program dry.

I'd also seen tournaments from the inside — vendor calls, scheduling decisions, the operational gaps that show up only when you run one. I started thinking about what a tournament built around the right priorities would look like.

The seven design decisions

When we decided to host the National Prep Tournament, I made seven specific design choices that other tournaments don't. These aren't accidents.

1. Single court, capped field

We cap the field at 12 teams across two divisions. One court, one game at a time. This is the opposite of the mega-bracket approach, and it's intentional.

Single-court means we can focus production resources (streaming, refs, scorekeepers, announcer, MVP awards) on each game as it happens. Every game gets the spotlight. The tradeoff is obvious: we can't host 40 teams. That's fine. We're not trying to.

2. Free YouTube streaming, archived afterward

Every game streams free on YouTube. Every stream gets archived. No paywall, no "premium subscription," no buried download.

This decision matters because it's how recruiting actually works in the streaming era (more in our recruiting pillar post). A college coach who can't travel to Florida in March can still watch the games Tuesday night. That happens dozens of times per game per archive in the weeks after the tournament.

3. IAABO-certified officials

This is a line item that costs more and shows up nowhere in marketing copy. But bad officiating ruins more tournaments than any other variable. A single bad referee crew can put a star player in foul trouble in the first quarter and make the whole weekend a waste.

So we hire IAABO-certified officials through a local board, with the same crew across the weekend for consistency. It's expensive. It's worth every dollar.

4. MVP awards each game, All-Tournament Team Sunday

Players play harder when there's recognition to chase. Game MVPs each game. An All-Tournament Team selected and announced publicly Sunday afternoon. Awards, photos, write-ups players and families can keep.

The cost of awards is small. The motivational impact is large. The recruiting impact — an All-Tournament Team selection in a player's bio — lasts for years.

5. Pricing that respects program budgets

$500 standard entry, $400 early bird. That's it. No surprise fees, no required hotel package, no mandatory add-ons.

We could charge $1,200 like some of the premier tournaments do, because the production quality is at that level. But charging $1,200 prices out the programs we want at this tournament: smaller prep academies, public school programs with limited travel budgets, post-grad programs that don't have shoe deals.

6. Real address, real phone number, real human

33 Jet Drive NW, Fort Walton Beach, FL 32548. 850-961-2323. My name and Kenny Anderson's are on the staff page. If something goes sideways during the tournament, you call me directly. If I don't answer, my voicemail does.

You'd be surprised how rare this is. We covered this in the red flags listicle — many tournament websites have no physical address and no direct phone. We chose to do the opposite as a foundational signal of trust.

7. We invite first, then accept

This isn't a click-and-pay tournament. Programs apply through the early bird application, and we review for fit before accepting. We're not trying to gatekeep — we just want competitive games. A program ranked 200th nationally and a program ranked #5 won't have a good time in the same bracket. Neither will the families. We try to set the field thoughtfully.

Why Fort Walton Beach

Fort Walton Beach is on the Emerald Coast of the Florida Panhandle. White sand beaches, 70°F average in March, and a regional airport (VPS) that's 15 minutes from the venue. Pensacola International (PNS) is an hour west with more direct flight options.

For driving teams, we're within 6 hours of Atlanta, Birmingham, New Orleans, Mobile, Tallahassee, and Pensacola. Within 9 hours of Nashville. The drive radius covers a huge piece of the Southeast.

This isn't an accident either. We picked the location knowing that a regional tournament with a 12-team field needs to be drive-accessible to enough programs to fill the field with quality competition. Most premier Florida tournaments are in Tampa, Orlando, Miami, or Palm Beach — expensive flight markets. We wanted a destination that worked for the budget realities of most prep programs.

Kenny Anderson on the staff

Kenny Anderson came on as part of our coaching staff at Florida Coastal Prep two years ago. Kenny was the #2 pick in the 1991 NBA Draft (New Jersey Nets), a 1994 NBA All-Star, and played 14 seasons across nine NBA teams. He coached at Fisk University before joining us.

Having Kenny here matters not because his name draws crowds — it doesn't, and that's not what the tournament is about — but because his perspective on player development and recruiting is irreplaceable. He's seen the recruiting game from every angle: as a top-ranked recruit himself, as an NBA professional, as a college head coach. When we talk about what college coaches actually look for at prep events, that perspective informs how we design every part of the tournament experience.

What we're not

To be honest about what this tournament isn't:

• We're not the biggest. We host 12 teams, not 120.
• We don't have 8 D1 head coaches walking the sideline. Most prep tournaments don't, but they market like they do. We don't make that claim.
• We're not in a destination market like Miami or Vegas. We're in Fort Walton Beach — a beautiful beach town, but smaller and regional.
• We're not an AAU circuit. We don't run a year-round series. We're one tournament, done well, once a year in March.

If you're looking for those things, there are tournaments that offer them, and they might be the right fit for your program. The March tournament guide covers other options.

What we are

We're a high-production, intimate, honestly-priced prep basketball tournament built by coaches for coaches. Every game streamed, every team gets quality competition, every game has recognition, and the people running it pick up the phone when you call.

If that's the kind of weekend you'd want your team to be part of, the door is open.

Looking forward to seeing your team in Fort Walton Beach.

— Coach Lee

About Coach Lee DeForest

Coach Lee is in his seventh year as Director and Director of Operations at Florida Coastal Prep Sports Academy. With 25+ years of coaching at the D1, D2, NAIA, and JUCO levels, he has developed players who have gone on to programs including Missouri (Sean East, currently in the NBA G-League), DePaul, Houston Baptist, and SIU Edwardsville. He won a state championship in 2011 and is an Amazon best-selling author of 5 basketball coaching books, including the Princeton Offense Mastery Blueprint. Lee is a U.S. Army Reserve veteran. Kenny Anderson, NBA veteran and 1994 NBA All-Star, serves on the FCP coaching staff.

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