For 49 years now, the Bo Bowman Baseball Tournament has been a staple during the spring season in Southwest Oklahoma and this year, nine teams battled it out to see who would bring the trophy and the bragging rights back to their home school.
The field consisted of the three Lawton Public Schools’ high school teams, the defending champions Cache, Altus, Anadarko, Riverside, Comanche and Big Pasture. Games were played at both the Lawton High School (LHS) and Eisenhower High School (EHS) fields Thursday, Friday, and Saturday. After three days of action, it was the Highlanders of MacArthur High School (MHS) that came out on top, bringing the title back to the east side of Lawton, where it has resided many times.
Round one drew some tough matchups for both the Wolverines and Eagles. Eisenhower started the tournament by hosting the 2024 Bo Bowman winner Cache. After a slow start and trailing 4-0 in the third inning, the Eagles put together a rally fueled by doubles by Santana Gordan, Noah Burns, and Colten Anderson leading to a 4-4 game. However, Cache quickly responded with a 5-run rally of their own before adding three more runs to give them the opening round 12-4 win. The Wolverines faced Comanche for their opening round game and also got into an early deficit. LHS bounced back in a big way, striking for 10 runs in the game while senior Adrian Garrison did his part on the mound to give the home team the 10-6 victory to advance to the semifinals.
In a dominant 14-0 win over Riverside, the Highlanders got a masterful pitching performance from freshman Kade Phillips, who struck out nine batters in the victory. That earned MHS a date with Cache in the Bo Bowman semifinals. Battling the defending champs proved to be much more difficult than their first round game. The Highlanders saw themselves trailing early, but after a 3-run third inning, they jumped on top of the Bulldogs 5-4. MHS saw that lead balloon to 12-4 thanks to big hits by seniors Spencer Thurman, Thatcher Zeller, and Boux DeLong. They were able to hold on and secure the 12-7 win to punch their ticket to the final. Lawton High was not as successful in their semifinal, falling to Altus 10-0, which matched them up with Cache in the third place game on Saturday. Against the defending champs, the Wolverines put up three runs but it was not enough to compete with the hot-swinging bats of Cache, who put up 13 runs in the win, giving LHS the fourth place finish.
Eisenhower’s second game was a back and forth contest that saw Riverside come out with the 9-7 win. However, they bounced back with a dominant win over Anadarko to end the tournament on a high note. The Eagles answered an Anadarko run in the top of the first with eight runs in the bottom of the frame to give them a big early advantage. Anderson drove in the ninth run in the second inning and then Trachte capped off a 5-run frame in the third with a bases-clearing hit that gave his team a 14-1 lead. Senior Hayden Bottorff held the opposition to just one more run to secure the 14-2 victory for Eisenhower.
Having dispatched one team of Bulldogs, the Highlanders drew another pack in the Bo Bowman final, facing Altus. One again, the MHS offense came to play, scoring 10 runs for the third time in the tournament, fueled by a 3-run homer by Thuman and a couple of hits from sophomore Lou Phillips. DeLong set the table at the top of the lineup, drawing four walks and scoring three times while also keeping the Altus bats in check while on the mound. The senior pitched all five innings and even recorded four of the Highlanders eight steals in the contest. The 10-2 win clinched the Bo Bowman title and brought the hardware back to the east side of Lawton.