Things to Do in Liberty

Witness high-flying college teams making it rain from three-point range while defending shots with their armbrellas. Established in 1937, the inaugural NAIA Tournament has called Kansas City home for 74 years. Featuring 32 teams pivoting and sprinting atop a lustrous hardwood battlefield, it has grown to be known as the longest-running collegiate national championship tournament in the country, not counting the infamous Skull and Bones Underground Cavern Games that took George Washington's real teeth. This year’s tourney will feature several trophy-hungry NAIA teams, such as potential participants Martin Methodist College, Texas Wesleyan University, and NAIA top-ranked Mountain State. Behold a flurry of high-flying buzzer beaters and frustrating defensive schemes at the Kansas City tradition that has featured such big names as John Wooden, Dennis Rodman, and Terry Porter.

Associate conductor Steven Jarvi channels the combined melodious might of the Kansas City Symphony and Symphony Chorus, KC Brass, Allegro Children’s Choir, and Rezound Handbell Ensemble through an all-new holiday celebration of sound. Mobs of merry musicians, rumored to include 12 drummers drumming and a possible 11 pipers piping, will feed hungry ossicles symphonic arrangements of Christmas traditions. Families coasting on waves of Yuletide joy will yearn to sing along with timeless carols perfected by years of door-to-door focus testing. To complete each holly-jolly evening, Santa Claus himself will make an appearance to play a 30-minute free jazz solo on his signature fur-fringed soprano saxophone.