Pride of the South Side

NORMAN - Oh, this debate. This venomous, spiteful, geographical tug of war is Oklahoma's high school version of Grey's Anatomy. It keeps us talking and gets us through Monday mornings and slow Wednesday afternoons. It's an East-West show where everyone has an opinion and everyone's always watching. But once in awhile, Must-See TV gets interrupted before returning us back to our regularly scheduled programming. Once in awhile, there's a Lawton Eisenhower, devoid of any geographical stereotypes and immune to Rand McNally limitations. In this state, in Class 6A, you're East, you're West or you're Ike. "I think it's a tribute to our guys that they never pay attention to that kind of stuff,'' said Ike coach Bruce Harrington. "I mean we don't feel like an outsider.'' In a basketball tournament that was filled with the usual suspects, re-runs of teams that have had so much success that they show up as often as Seinfeld in syndication, Lawton Eisenhower was decidedly different. At state for the first time since 2003 and in the finals for the first time since 1981, the Eagles shook up the bracket with rating-shaking wins over Broken Arrow, No. 1 and undefeated Union before falling to Midwest City in the championship game. "We belong here,'' said Harrington, who took his team to the state tournament with a lineup that featured five senior starters, all over them taller than 6-feet and all of them on 6A's prime-time slot for the first time in their high school careers. "In the last 10 to 15 years, we felt like we've had a good shot.'' But never have the Eagles had a run like this one. In addition to their wins against the state's elite during the state tournament, Ike had beaten 6A mainstay Putnam City twice - including once in the playoffs - and beaten 6A semifinalist Putnam City North once as well. Those kind of wins, for awhile anyway, stopped all the talk of Union, Putnam City and the regulars who dominate the scenery of 6A, and shined a bit of popularity to the southern part of the state that features just two Class 6A teams - Lawton and Lawton Ike. "For some reason, Lawton is perceived as a place where things go wrong,'' said senior guard Blake Harrington, a coach's son who averaged 10 points per game during the season and scored 18 against Union in the 64-55 semifinal win. "They always think we're not a team. But we are. The only thing different from us at Ike and those other schools are their facilities. But we have pretty good kids here, too.'' Good enough to beat a Broken Arrow team in the first round and good enough to beat a Union team making its 13th state tournament appearance. And while Midwest City, the class of the Class during the state tournament, was better than Ike on championship Saturday, the Eagles showed the East-West sympathizers that the South can play, too. "Oh, Ike is very good,'' said Midwest City coach Rodney Dindy. "They have great athletes and we knew we had to get up on them early. It's hard to handle them the whole game.'' And while Ike will have to wait, at least for now, to win a state title, the Eagles showed themselves as different, but definitely worth watching, in the state tournament. "It's hard for us in Lawton,'' said Bruce Harrington. "We can't get teams to come down and play us, but when we do play them, we always feel like we have a good chance. I don't think all of this was a fluke.''