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Prince George's County Public Schools athletic officials hope a new boys' high school basketball tournament scheduled for next month at Henry A. Wise Jr. High School will provide funds to install synthetic turf playing surfaces at three county high schools.

The Prince George's Schools Athletic Association and the Prince George's Black Chamber of Commerce will sponsor the first Maryland National Hoops Classic from Dec. 28-30 at Wise High. The gym at the Upper Marlboro school, which opened in 2006, seats 5,000 and provides an ideal venue for major athletic events. County schools Athletic Director Earl Hawkins said the Wise gym and a 2008 ESPN Magazine article touting Prince George's County as a hotbed of basketball talent helped set the stage for the tournament.

"When we built Wise High School, we envisioned it as a great place for a national tournament," Hawkins said. "And when the ESPN article was published, that made even more of a case for us to do something of this caliber."

County schools Wise, Bladensburg and Friendly are scheduled to participate, along with Calvin Coolidge of the District, Mergenthaller of Baltimore, Stuart of Fairfax, Va., Herbert Hoover of San Diego and Raleigh Egypt of Memphis, Tenn.

Hawkins said the athletic association will keep 90 percent of the gate receipts and share the concession sales with Wise. The remaining 10 percent of the gate will go to the Black Chamber.

Black Chamber President Petey Green said running the tournament will cost $60,000 to $75,000. He said efforts to obtain sponsorship to defray the costs are ongoing. He declined to name any potential sponsors. He estimated that gate receipts could generate as much as $50,000.

"It's going to be an exciting event, and something we think has the potential to grow into one of the largest hoops classics in the region," Green said, adding that he hopes the tournament can include a bracket of girls' games in the future.

Hawkins said funds from the tournament will be set aside for "big projects," including installation of synthetic playing surfaces for the football/soccer fields at High Point High School in Beltsville, Friendly High School in Fort Washington and Largo High School. Of Prince George's County's 22 public high schools, those are the only three with lights at their fields. Installing synthetic surfaces in those locations would give the school system one field each in the northern, central and southern portions of the county that could accommodate multiple games on the same day, including night games, without concern about wear and tear on the playing surfaces.

With boys' and girls' soccer and varsity and junior varsity football teams all playing from September through early November, many county school fields are in poor condition by the late stages of the fall sports season. Rainy weather frequently causes postponements, as it did this week, when Gwynn Park High in Brandywine moved its football playoff game against McDonough High from Saturday to Monday due to soggy conditions.

"You get a number of days of rain, and the fields aren't playable," Hawkins said Saturday prior to the Charles H. Flowers-Suitland football game in Springdale, which was played on a field that got progressively sloppier as the game wore on. "It would have helped to be able to move to a [synthetic] field. These fields are playable, but barely. It's muddy at every site where we had games this weekend. It's going to take creative financing, and one tournament won't even pay for one field, but it's a start."

A synthetic turf field can cost from $750,000 to $1 million, said Greg LeGrand, coordinator of athletics for the Anne Arundel County Public Schools. Using funds from Project Open Space, a state grant program that provides money for recreational facility projects, Anne Arundel schools are in the process of installing synthetic turf at all 12 of the county's high schools.

Between school physical education classes, practices, games and recreational community sports leagues, LeGrand said Anne Arundel's synthetic surfaces are in use from

7 a.m. to 10 p.m. daily during the spring and fall. He said the fields should last 10 to 12 years before needing major renovation.

"The peripheral benefit is that it's saving the rest of our fields," LeGrand said. "Our practice fields aren't dirt bowls. When you look at the sheer amount of feet on those fields all day, it saves us a ton."

E-mail Seth Elkin at selkin@gazette.net.