86th Cowbell Tournament Crowns New Champions

By Marty Mayfield
KRTN Multi-Media

In 2023 the Cowbell Tourney played its 86th year and is in the books with with new champions Roy/Mosquero girls and Des Moines boys crowned. Some really close games brought exciting basketball to Northeast New Mexico this last week with first round action on Tuesday, Dec 5th and Wednesday, Dec. 6th at Springer’s Sim Brown Gym. evenings and saw one game, the Raton Trinidad girl’s game, canceled because of weather Saturday morning.

In the first round of tourney play the games saw some runaways along with some very close games like the Clayton vs Roy/Mosquero game on Tuesday where the Blue bested Clayton 57-45. Both teams were equally sized and worked the ball equally well. On Wednesday night in a rematch of last year’s boys championship game with a different outcome as Raton battled with Maxwell down to the finish with Raton coming out on top in the last minute of the game 47-44.

On the consolation side of the bracket on Thursday both boys games were runaways setting up an exciting game with Clayton and Maxwell on Saturday for the consolation championship. Maxwell was down for a period of time then came back to tie and pull ahead while Clayton fell behind and battled back as well. It was Maxwell who pulled ahead in the fourth for the 63-59 win.  The only close consolation game on the girl’s bracket was the Trinidad vs Des Moines game where Des Moines bested Trinidad 43-34. After talking to coaches it is noted that a couple of the teams are very young and inexperienced and populated with freshman and 8th graders. The Lady Demons went on the take the consolation title winning the consolation championship 52-13 over Maxwell.

Moving to Raton for the winners side of the bracket on Friday, Dec. 8th saw a wider spread in the girls games with Roy moving on to the championship with a 59-26 win over Cimarron and Springer besting Clayton 61-32.

On Saturday, the Cimarron vs Clayton third place game for girls stayed close until Clayton started hitting and went on to pull ahead of Cimarron for the 46-33 win. In the boys game, Raton and Roy battled it out with Raton pulling it out by 10 later in the game to win 50-40.

The championship games were simply championship games with both teams being well matched. On the girls side of the bracket, it was a rematch of last year’s championship, but Roy/Mosquero turned the tables to win 48-37. While the Lady Blue spread out some of their scoring Sylvie Baca was the point leader with 17 despite getting into foul trouble early.  For Springer Fatima Levario (11) and Abigail Eppler lead the scoring (10) followed by Olivia Burton with 9.

In the boys championship game Des Moines had to battle 6″9″ senior Demetrius Jackson who made his presence felt throughout the tourney with blocks, rebounds and a good outside shooting touch. The Demons Caleb Sumpter while only 6’2″ managed to find a way around Jackson underneath and posted 24 points while Jackson dropped in 19 in the first half and could only manage six in the third quarter with Des Moines shutting him down in the fourth. Des Moines pulled out the win 63-48.

For many the cowbell was the first games of the season while Raton and Springer played in the TSC Tourney giving them a three game advantage to work out some of the kinks.