Warriors snag the big one

As he made his way into the third base dugout of Chickasaw Bricktown Ballpark, Okarche centerfielder Jett Mueggenborg was greeted by the bulk of his teammates.

The senior had just recorded two outs in the bottom of the third inning of the Class A fall baseball state championship game.

The first of those saw him cover an unbelievable amount of ground to snag a ball that was smashed to the right-center gap.

His catch - with two Canute Trojans on board and nobody out - saved a minimum of one and likely two runs.

Easton Roby struck out the next batter with runners on the corners and then Mueggenborg caught a fly ball that was much more of the routine manner to end the threat.

As he stepped off the well-manicured grass and down the steps of the dugout, Mueggenborg had a simple message for Canute: “Not today.” He was right. It was Okarche’s day. It was the Warriors’ season.

Behind stellar defense like Mueggenborg’s, the best pitching staff in the state and a red-hot top of the lineup, top-ranked Okarche made history on Saturday with an 8-2 victory over No. 2 Canute.

That win gave Okarche its first-ever baseball state championship and capped a 30-2 season in which the Warriors were wire-to-wire No. 1.

“It’s unreal and I don’t even know if it’s hit me yet,” said Luke Hill, Okarche’s leadoff batter who scored three times in each of the state tournament games.

“It feels really, really good,” added head coach Ryan Beaman. “It’s all about these kids. They’re a great group and just a bunch of competitors.

“They put the time in on and off the field. They like to get after it.

“This is great for the program and great for the community.”

The program had come close before with finals appearances in the spring of 2010 and 2011 as well as the fall of 2010, but each time had to settle for the runner-up trophy.

And this crop of 10 seniors had come close in their own way.

They were semifinalists in the fall of both 2023 and 2024 and the spring of both 2024 and 2025, but the championship game proved elusive.

That included both seasons last year when Okarche lost a painful 9-8 game to Rattan in the fall semifinals and then a 3-1 decision to Wright City in the spring’s final four.

It left one to wonder. Are these Warriors cursed on the baseball field?

•••

All signs have been pointing toward this season for Okarche baseball.

Coaches Ryan Beaman, Matt Yost and Chris Roby have been with the core group of players for several years.

They showed promise as freshmen, then broke through the state tournament barrier as sophomores.

Each time they’ve made a state tournament, they’ve won a quarterfinal game.

But they couldn’t win two.

“I just think you have to get the right breaks,” Beaman said.

For whatever reason, they didn’t come.

But with basically everyone returning for the fall of 2025, Okarche figured the team to beat.

“This was our year,” said senior Easton Roby. “We knew coming into this year that we needed to make it here and we came to practice with a goal in mind and just working toward it everyday.”

And the Warriors certainly primed themselves with their schedule.

The team played 32 games.

Thirty of them were against ranked teams. The lone exceptions were Dale JV in a tournament semifinal and Hydro-Eakly in the middle of the season.

Despite the loaded schedule, Okarche started the season with seven wins.

The first hiccup was a 7-5 defeat to Preston, which was ranked No. 1 in 2A all season long.

Then the Warriors rattled off 11 straight wins before they were knocked off 2-1 by 2A’s second-ranked Dale…a team Okarche had already beaten twice.

Both of those teams were upset in the quarterfinal round of their state tournament.

The team that won it on Saturday night was Byng. Okarche beat those Pirates 4-2 and 11-1 this season.

The Warriors played both teams that played in the Class B state championship. Twice Okarche beat Fort Cobb-Broxton, 7-1 and 5-3.

Okarche defeated Class B champ Calumet 3-2.

After that loss to Dale, the Warriors concluded their season with 12 straight victories.

So intimidating were the Warriors that their district opponent opted to forfeit as opposed to taking the pair of throttlings that awaited.

The Warriors outscored their two regional foes by a combined 32-0.

What made them so good?

It started with pitching. Only three times this season did Okarche allow more than three runs.

The Warriors still won two of those games.

As a team, Okarche had a 1.32 earned run average for the season.

Okarche pitchers struck out 230 batters and only walked 58.

“Pitching depth was definitely a big part of it,” said Beaman.

Once at the state tournament, Okarche had the rare instance when the starting pitching wasn’t sharp.

Starter Ethan Carnott didn’t last an inning as Wright City plated two early runs.

Ethan Kirby came in and steadied the boat and Okarche’s offense took over, including Carnott doing his part with 8 RBIs in the 15-2 victory.

“It didn’t go the way I wanted it to, but Kirby went in and did a good job only to give up two that inning,” Carnott said after Saturday’s win. “So I just went in what could I do to help my team. You can’t think about the past because that will get on you when you go to the plate if you keep thinking about it.

“So I just act like it didn’t happen.”

More pitching depth - and forgetting the past showed up when a pair of hexes were broken Friday at Shawnee High School when the Warriors exorcised their semifinal demons with a 6-1 victory over No. 4 Rattan.

In the 2024 semifinal, Hill was given the start.

He lasted all of one inning against Rattan, gave up six hits, walked three batters and surrendered seven runs.

Okarche fell behind 8-0 before a near-miraculous comeback came up short.

This time around, Beaman said he didn’t hesitate to give Hill the ball…in the semifinals…against Rattan.

“We trust Luke,” Beaman said. “He’s got good stuff and can throw everything for a strike.

“We’ve got nothing but confidence in that kid.”

He responded with fiveplus innings of work in which he allowed five hits and one earned run while striking out seven.

“Every day is a new day, but especially when it’s a whole year apart,” Hill said. “This was a new year, so I really didn’t think about last year at all.”

Hill provided himself some run support when he led off the game with a walk and later scored on Mueggenborg’s groundout.

The Warriors made their big move in the third.

Hill’s one-out single was the first of four consecutive hits by Okarche.

He scored when Roby followed him with a triple. Roby scored on Carnott’s single.

Mueggenborg doubled Carnott to third base and then both scored on Kirby’s base hit for a 5-0 lead.

It wasn’t until the bottom of the sixth that Rattan was able to make some noise.

After a leadoff walk and then a double, Rattan was on the board.

Then with a 2-1 count on the inning’s third batter, Beaman made the decision to turn to freshman Cy Collamore.

“Cy’s proven throughout the course of the season that he’s a competitor, too,” Beaman said. “He wants the ball in those moments, so that wasn’t a hard decision to put him in there.”

But Collamore did get off to a shaky start.

He ended up walking the batter he inherited to put two runners on base. Collamore then balked those runners into scoring position with nobody out.

Rattan was sniffing momentum.

And then, on a full-count pitch, Collamore got a line out to right fielder Lane Rother, who quickly got the ball back in before the runners could advance.

Collamore then struck out the next two batters to get out of the jam.

The game was all but over, but the Warriors grabbed some insurance when Hill led off the seventh with a double and scored on a steal of home.

Collamore closed out the game in the seventh.

“We had other options, too,” Beaman said of his staff. “But he’s a kid that wants the ball and we felt like he could go get it done.

“And he did.” Okarche had eight hits in the game, all from batters in the first five slots of the lineup.

Hill was 2 for 3 with a trio of runs scored.

Carnott and Kirby also went 2 for 3. Kirby drove in two runs while Carnott scored once and had an RBI.

Roby and Mueggenborg both had one hit, one run and 1 RBI each.

The smiles shone bright after the game as Okarche had dispatched the team that had ended their last two falls and finally reached a championship game.

“Every time you lose, it just builds a fire,” Carnott said. “You just go out there and think about all the days that you went home sad, wishing you could have made it.

“So making it’s pretty nice.”

But would that be enough? Would the Warriors find complacency in reaching those finals?

“After we won against Rattan, we cheered for a little bit,” Roby said. “But then we were, like ‘that’s not the end.’

“We knew we needed to stay locked in, wake up the next day and come do it one more time.”

That one more time would come against Canute, the team coming off a state championship last spring.

The two squads opened this fall season against each other. Okarche won 2-0.

Just like that game, Okarche was sending Roby to the mound.

The senior struck and gave up just one hit in six shutout innings on that August afternoon.

Before he ever threw a pitch in the state championship, Roby was spotted a three-run head start.

Okarche got five base hits in the top of the first to strike quickly.

The game started when Hill reached on an error.

He got to third on Roby’s single and scored on Carnott’s RBI groundout.

Mueggenborg belted a base hit to score Roby and then Mueggenborg eventually scored on a base knock by Jake Henderson.

The top of the second inning was much the same.

Hill started things up with a hit before Roby was walked.

Carnott’s hit to left field brought home Hill, which chased Canute starting pitcher Clay Randall before he could record an out in the second inning.

Roby scored with two outs when Colin Hendrickson legged out an infield single. Carnott scored on a passed ball for a 6-0 lead.

If there was one knock on Okarche during the course of the season, it was the bats taking a while to warm up.

That didn’t happen in the state tournament.

“That’s something that hasn’t happened all season,” Beaman said. “But the last two days we got off to a fast start and then today was no different.

“Getting three in the first and scratching three more in the second allowed us to breathe a little bit and taking that early momentum was huge.”

And it was all Roby needed.

He cruised through the first two innings before facing his first issue in the third inning. The Trojans’ Nixon Baker and Randall started the frame with back-to-back singles.

That sent Jake Beutler to the plate and he launched the second pitch of the atbat to the deepest part of the ballpark.

“I don’t know how far I ran,” Mueggenborg said. “I was just trying to run it down.”

He did, just as Henderickson, the right fielder, slid to avoid a collision.

Mueggenborg spun and fired the ball back to the infield, allowing only Baker to advance to third after tagging up.

The inning proved fruitless for the Trojans.

Hill watched the play from his shortstop position and has been the beneficiary of great defense behind him while on the mound himself.

“It gives you so much confidence on the bump,” he said. “Even if you make a mistake, you feel like your guys would go track it down and make a great play.”

Okarche watched something quite familiar unfold again in the fifth.

Hill walked, stole second and scored on Roby’s single.

Mueggenborg walked in the sixth inning and eventually made it 8-0 on a passed ball.

Eight different Warriors had at least one hit as the team combined for 12.

Roby was 3 for 4 with 1 RBI and two runs.

“Just hitting the ball is one of the best feelings ever, in my opinion,” he said.

He did a lot of it at state by going 6 for 8 with six runs and 4 RBIs.

Kirby, who was 3 for 3 in the championship game, also went 6 for 8 in the three-game run at state. He scored twice and had 3 RBIs overall.

Carnott went 1 for 4 against the Trojans, scored once and drove in two runs.

Mueggenborg was 1 for 3 with a pair of runs and an RBI.

Hill was 1 for 3 and crossed home three times.

For the state tournament, those five were a combined 25 of 46 (.543).

They had all but six of Okarche’s hits at state, scored 24 of the 29 runs and had 21 of the 25 RBIs.

“They can hit,” Beaman said. “They can just flat hit. It’s all about putting the barrel on the ball and they found a lot of barrels.”

Sam Kroener also had a single in the title game to go along with the hits offered by Hendrickson and Henderson.

That depth at the plate, said Roby, helped put Okarche over the top in 2025.

“Our 1 through 5 really produced, but the whole lineup throughout the year produced so well,” he said. “I didn’t think we had a hole in our lineup at all and you just keep turning the lineup over and over and over again.”

Roby didn’t prove infallible on the mound.

Late morning turned to early afternoon and temperatures rose into the low 90s.

Roby spent a lot of time running the bases and threw a fair number of pitches and it began to show in about the fifth inning.

“I was starting to feel the arm,” he said. “I could definitely feel it wasn’t as electric as the first inning.”

Roby got out of the fifth unscathed, but gave up a single and a double to start the sixth. That second hit brought home Canute’s first run of the game.

“I knew if I could just throw strikes that we had a big enough lead,” Roby said.

He got the next two batters out, hit one and then forced a groundout to get out of the frame.

There was more trouble in the seventh.

After a leadoff popup for an out, Roby gave up a triple, a single and a double. The middle hit scored a run.

With runners at second and third and just one out, Roby got a strikeout for the second out.

That was the good news. The bad news, for Roby, was that third strike was his 120th pitch of the game. Per OSSAA’s pitch count rules, his day was done.

Roby thought he was just under the limit, which would have allowed him to attempt to get the final out.

“I did,” he said. “But my dad (Chris Roby) came out there and he was telling me the numbers. I was just trying to get it done.

“It was upsetting, but it’s all good.”

That’s because he had a gold medal around his neck.

Kirby came on and recorded the final out as Jake Knutson flew out to right field. Cody Endres made the catch on the run, prompting Okarche’s dogpile on the infield.

Roby lasted 6 2/3 innings, struck out five and walked two. He gave up eight hits and two earned runs.

“He never wavered,” Beaman said. “He wanted to finish it, but the pitch count got us. That’s the kind of kid he is. He wants it. He wants to be in that moment.

“He just flat out loves to compete.”

Beaman would know. He’s been around Roby all his life.

Beaman and Chris Roby are brothers-in-law, making Easton Roby his nephew.

And that also meant that among the dozens and dozens of combinations of hugs taking place on the infield was that of father and son, Chris and Easton Roby.

“Having my dad on the team just makes it that much sweeter. I mean, we’re best friends,” Easton said. “We talk all the time. We talk baseball every night at home and just doing it with him and giving me a big hug after the game just makes it awesome.”

Roby, Beaman and Yost didn’t coincidentally land at Okarche together.

They worked and coached together at Yukon before each was hired in their own time at Okarche.

“We go back a long way to the Yukon days,” Beaman said. “With Chris, we’re family and have been around each other a long time. Of course, all those days with Matt back at Yukon.

“We love to coach together. We bounce ideas off each other. It’s a group effort, 100 percent.”

When they moved from the field to the stadium concourse, the players and coaching staff were greeted by the Okarche faithful that dwarfed the opponents’ crowd all three days at state.

“It’s electric. The fan base is insane,” Carnott said. “You look at the other teams’ fans and there’s not a lot of people there, but our whole town shows up and it helps so much.”

And Carnott, who had six hits and 11 RBIs at state, knew what awaited when the Warriors would return home. The whole town would be there to greet the Warriors…and the newest addition to the trophy case.

“It’s awesome to get the first one there,” he said. “It’s awesome to get to bring it home.”