A total of 13 teams will be hoping to shoot the lights out across Whitehorse this weekend in the fourth annual Lights Out Yukon Invitational Basketball Tournament that kicked off Thursday evening.

Teams in both the men’s and women’s divisions will be fighting it out over three days for the top prize of $1,000.

The tournament is continuing to grow, Yukon Men’s Basketball League director Nathan Thomson said, with more total teams this year than in the past.

“We had been going to a few tournaments for a few years in a row and just kind of decided it was time to start doing our own,” he said.

This year’s would have been even larger, Thomson said, but a few teams dropped out in the recent weeks leading up to the tournament. However, they still have international representation in the women’s tournament with the Haines Merchants coming from Alaska.

This is the second year for the women’s tournament which has grown to six teams, women’s basketball league co-ordinator Lianne Fordham said.

On the men’s side, the communities are represented with a team from Dawson.

In last year’s event, teams from Yellowknife came down to participate in both divisions as well as teams from Inuvikwho were set to come again this year but had to decline at the last minute.

“We hope it will grow more and more,” Fordham said. “Next year we have promise from Juneau to come and Yellowknife again, and Inuvik who came last year.”

The Yukon women’s league will also be heading to Haines to visit one of their tournaments in March.

Fordham said they are also receiving tonnes of community sponsors and this is the second straight year Kilrich Building Centres is the presenting sponsor for the event.

“Not only is our tournament growing with the amount of players and teams from the communities but we’re also getting more community partnership,” she said.

Both of the Arctic Winter Games basketball teams will be taking part in the tournament, which Fordham noted is a great opportunity for them to play competitive games before heading to Northwest Territories in March.

“There’s not a lot of competitive basketball in town,” she said. “So it’s nice to get together and play a good high-competitive tournament.”

Games will be played at Porter Creek Secondary School and Vanier Catholic Secondary School through to Saturday evening. All teams will play two round-robin games before the playoffs starting this evening with all teams advancing to the knockout rounds.

The semifinals and championship games will be played Saturday with both finals at Porter Creek starting at 4 p.m.