Bowie sets state championship as goal
Bulldogs confifident after knocking offff defending champs The Woodlands.
This past weekend, Bowie’s baseball team dethroned the state’s defending champion. On Thursday, the Bulldogs will continue their quest to claim the throne that was abdicated by The Woodlands.
Bowie (27-8) will open a bestof-three regional quarterfinal series with Klein Collins on Thursday. The Bulldogs are coming off an area-round oust- er of The Woodlands, which won the Class 5A championship in 2013.
“We’re not surprised at all (with our success),” senior pitcher Dustin Jourdan said. “I think we can win state.”
Since the start of the 2005 season, six area baseball teams have beaten a defending champion in the postseason.
A bidistrict finalist in 2013, Bowie entered the spring with limited experience on its varsity roster. Junior pitcher Kyle Gray returned after earning District 15-5A’s Newcomer of the Year award, and he was re-
joined by senior third baseman Marcel Carter, senior outfielder Austin Eschenburg and junior catcher Joe Davis.
“I was trying to feel them out,” Bowie coach Sam Degelia said. “I knew we had some good players. I knew we had some pitching.”
The Bulldogs also underwent a coaching change in the off-season. Kind of. Rudy Alvarez retired after 15 seasons as Bowie’s head coach and Degelia, a longtime assistant, took over. Alvarez remained at Bowie as an assistant coach.
“It’s been new, (but) we like it,” Carter said. “We love Coach Alvarez, so having him around is still good. Coach D brings a lot of new things to the table, so we get the best of both worlds.”
Bowie opened the season with wins in nine of its first 12 games, and the Bulldogs won their first seven contests against district competition. Bowie eventually split the District 15-5A championship with Lake Travis, which will play Humble Atascocita in the regional quarterfinals.
The Bulldogs got a 108 win over Lake Travis in March, but the Bulldogs’ worst loss this season was an 11-2 against the Cavaliers on April 4. Lake Travis also beat Bowie in a game that determined postseason seeding.
“They were a good test for us,” Jourdan said. “They really showed us the reality of how hard this is going to be.”
In the playoffs, Jourdan has won both of his starts. Davis, who hit an area-best 11 home runs during the regular season, leads an offense that has scored 21 runs over five playoff games.
The Bulldogs’ lone loss of the postseason came in its area-round opener against The Woodlands. Needing to win two games to extend its season, the Bulldogs met on their campus on Saturday to go over the mistakes that the team had made in the 6-1 defeat.
A few hours later, Bowie was celebrating 6-1 and 4-1 wins over The Woodlands. Meanwhile, the state was looking for a new champion.