By Kenton Brooks
Phoenix Sports Writer
With a new wrinkle this season, the 29th Annual Bedouin Shrine Classic released its schedule Tuesday.
The tournament begins Jan. 5 and continues through Jan. 10 at the Muskogee Civic Center, Muskogee High School and Hilldale High School.
For the first time in the tournament’s history, coaches seeded the teams one through eight in each of the four divisions and then the tournament officials completed the brackets.
“The coaches wanted to seed the tournament themselves,” Leonard Branan, the tournament director, said. “We made the brackets, put the times in for the games and filled it out.”
The No. 1 seeds in each of the four divisions include Broken Arrow boys and girls in the Large School Divisions and Oktaha boys and girls in the Small School Divisions.
Returning to defend their championships include the Broken Arrow boys and Sequoyah girls in the Large School brackets, while Oktaha boys and girls seek another title in the Small School Divisions.
Other teams entered in the week-long tournament include the boys and girls teams from Muskogee, Hilldale, Wagoner, Sequoyah, Tahlequah, Checotah, Enid and Broken Arrow in the Large School Division. In the Small School Division, the boys and girls squads from Oktaha, Warner, Hulbert, Boynton-Moton, Haskell, Spiro, Chouteau and McCurtain are entered.
Jim Bushnell, the assistant tournament director, said “about” $36,000 was raised from last year’s tournament.
This year’s poster children are 6-year-old Dru Baker of Tahlequah and 9-year-old Hunter Guthrie of Oktaha.
Baker is the daughter of Tahlequah assistant coach Nick Baker. She’s paralyzed from the chest down after an auto accident and receives treatment from the Shrine Hospital in Chicago. Guthrie has mild cerebral palsy and gets treated at the hospital in Shreveport, La.
New coaches of boys and girls teams at Muskogee, Hilldale, Wagoner, Checotah, Boynton-Moton and Haskell will also be in the tournament in January.
In last year’s title games, Sequoyah beat Muskogee 49-28 for the Large School girls title and Broken Arrow turned back Enid 63-35 for the Large School boys championship. In the Small School title games, Oktaha’s boys beat Hulbert 64-38 and the Lady Tigers knocked off the Lady Riders, 54-36.
