The inaugural Nike Tournament of Champions was conducted in December, 1997 in Santa Barbara, CA as a 32-team high school girls’ basketball event. After showcasing the eventual USA Today National Champions in consecutive years (New York Christ the King in 1997 and Copperas Cove, Texas in 1998), the event rapidly grew into the nation’s premier prep basketball tournament, attracting the majority of the preseason top 25 teams in the United States each year and being heralded by the national news media as “unparalleled” (USA Today) and “staggering” ( ESPN).

By 1999 the Tournament of Champions was widely regarded as the de facto national championship for American girls’ basketball, and since its founding the event has produced 23 of the last 26 consensus national champions (USA Today, ESPN).

After being hosted by DePaul and Northwestern Universities in Chicago in 2000, the Tournament of Champions moved to the Phoenix Metro area in December, 2001, where it is now one of the largest interscholastic sporting events in the nation, showcasing at least 120 basketball teams annually from more than 20 states and every region of the country. Since its inception, Nike’s flagship girls basketball event has hosted nearly 40,000 student athletes from the United States, Canada, Mexico, Australia, New Zealand and Switzerland.

The first affiliated club basketball event was conducted in 1999 in the Chicagoland area and was then known as the “Nike Cup.” The tournament began with 24 Nike-sponsored teams at two venues in Des Plaines, IL; it doubled in size in 2000 and again in 2001 when it was renamed the Summer Showcase. In 2013 the event moved from the suburbs to downtown Chicago, and in 2018 it was given the honor of hosting Nike Nationals, the culmination of the brand’s Elite Youth Basketball League (EYBL). Today, it is known simply as the Nike Tournament of Champions and  is one of the largest age-specific NCAA-certified club basketball events for girls in the United States, with more than 800 teams and nearly 10,000 student athletes competing annually. Considered by most analysts and collegiate basketball coaches to be the nation’s most competitive and prestigious event, the TOC + Nike Nationals hosted more than 1,100 college basketball coaches in 2022 – when it also partnered with the NBA to host the WNBA All-Star Game and Skills Competition.

The Tournament of Champions brand expanded in 2009 to include girls’ volleyball. Like its basketball counterpart, the volleyball events – held regionally in Arizona and Florida – have become the premier high school tournaments in the country, routinely hosting the top volleyball teams in the nation and the Prep Volleyball National Champions five times in the last seven years.