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The National Football League’s Punt, Pass and Kick youth football skills competition was grounded in 2017 after 56 years (RIP), but Major League Baseball’s Pitch, Hit & Run is still scoring with young ballplayers. And now, basketball players young and old have a similar skills competition.
Cities in at least three Midwestern states — Wisconsin, Iowa and Minnesota — either are or will be hosting 2s Frees 3s events this year. Nicknamed 2F3, 2s Frees 3s is a two-minute, 21-spot shooting competition open to all ages spanning five divisions that range from 9 and under to 55 and over. The challenge takes place on a regulation-size basketball court, and each participant must make a shot at each spot before moving on to the next one. Scoring is based on the number of shots made during the two minutes from two-point range, the free throw line and three-point range. See the complete rules here.
“2s Frees 3s is very much plug-and-play,” Adam Frame, director of operations for the Milwaukee-based competition, recently told Athletic Business. Competitions include 20 regional events, four sectional events and one championship.
As explained on 2F3’s website:
Shooters compete first in a regional competition with the goal of scoring an 11 or higher, which qualifies you to move on to Sectionals. At Sectionals, the goal is to have one of the top 5 scores in your division. The shooters who have the top 5 scores in each division at Sectionals qualify to compete at State Finals.
At State Finals, each shooter first competes against the other shooters in their division to be crowned Runner up and receive a silver trophy ball or State Champion and receive a gold trophy ball. Once State Champions are crowned in each division, all the state champs compete in one final round called the “Round of Champions.” The shooter to complete the 21-spot course the fastest in this round is given the title of the 2F3 Greatest Shooter in the [S]tate of WI, given a custom gold 2F3 Championship Belt and a $10,000 cash prize.
It should be noted that the $10,000 prize is only available in Wisconsin right now. But 2F3 is expanding to neighboring states Iowa and Minnesota this fall.
“The million-dollar question is how do we scale this up to the national level?” Frame said.
“We are wanting to use the power of basketball to come to Minnesota and to Iowa, and we hope one day over this whole world,” 11-year NBA veteran (and top-10 all-time three-point shooter) Steve Novak, who co-founded 2F3 is 2022, told KTTC.com in Rochester, Minn., last year. “But for now, we want to be in Minnesota and introduce this there and get a lot of hoopers and ballers to see who the top shooters are.”
The 2025 2F3 schedule in Wisconsin includes 25 competitions around the state; it began March 1 and will continue running through August, when the state finals will take place at the Al McGuire Center at Marquette University.
According to Athletic Business, 2F3 hosts about half of its regional Wisconsin competitions at YMCAs and the other half at school gymnasiums. Hosting responsibilities include promoting the competition via email and providing one to two hours of gym time. According to the organization’s website, “2F3 will run the entire competition and present trophies to the top shooters.”
“Five dollars per competitor goes back to the host facility. That could be anywhere from a couple hundred bucks all the way up to $600,” Frame said. “Not life-changing money, but money you can use to buy new basketballs or put toward new jerseys.”
“Anyone can win as proven in 2024 when a 9-year-old shooter, Crew Miskel, won the ultimate shooting competition beating out the other division winners, all of whom were older,” Mark Kass, executive director of the Wisconsin Athletic Hall of Fame and senior vice president and chief content officer of the Milwaukee-based sports marketing firm TEAM LAMMI, wrote in a LinkedIn post promoting Wisconsin’s 2025 2F3 competitions.
2F3 also has adaptive divisions, and Frame hopes to increase female participation, too.
“I’m trying to get more girls involved in the competition, because right now it is dominated by the guys,” he told Athletic Business. “It can be intimidating if there are 100 people registered, and only eight of them are girls.”
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