The people within the inner-circle of the Shawnee (Okla.) High School baseball program had heard the whispers for years, only now the volume was getting ratcheted up a notch, not unlike a spring thunderstorm slowly gaining intensity and rolling in over the Central Oklahoma plains.

Heading into the 2015 season, the Wolves had advanced to the Oklahoma Secondary School Activities Association (OSSAA) Class 5A state tournament 13 of the previous 16 seasons but had never won the championship. They had become the Oklahoma high school baseball version of the best professional golfer who had never won one of the four Majors, and they were getting tired of hearing about it.

When such background noise persists, there really is only one thing a team or a person can do to muffle the murmurs: go out and grab some gold. So that is exactly what the young Wolves did last spring, winning three games in three days in mid-May to claim the OSSAA Class 5A state championship, the first in the school’s more than 110-year history.

“We had heard the talk, that Shawnee could get to the state tournament but we just couldn’t quite get it done,” 10^th-year Shawnee head coach Todd Boyer told PG last week. “So to finally get over that hump and win a state championship after 13 previous trips to the state tournament, I was excited for our entire program and all the kids that had come through in the previous years and made it to the state tournament. I was just as excited for them as I was for the kids that were here.”

The Class 5A championship put Shawnee in a more prominent place on the Oklahoma high school baseball map, a landscape most recently dominated by the Class 6A programs at Owasso, Union and Jenks, 5A schools like Carl Albert and Bishop Kelley and smaller schools like Verdgris, Sperry, Dale, Silo, Latta, Roff, Cameron, Red Oak and Asher. It shouldn’t have taken a championship to elevate Shawnee into that neighborhood, but this is a “What have you done for me lately?’ world we live in.

What the Wolves did accomplish last year has brought with it much deserved recognition along with high expectations. Shawnee HS opened at No. 38 in the 2016 Perfect Game High School National Preseason Top 50 Rankings, trailing only No. 5 Coppell, No. 9 Flower Mound, No. 13 Dallas Jesuit, No. 25 Southlake Carroll and No. 36 Prosper from Texas, and No. 33 Owasso (Okla.) among the ranked schools in the PG HS Texahoma Region (Texas, Oklahoma).

That is an upscale neighborhood, and the Wolves should feel right at home there based on what they accomplished last season, one that ended with a 32-5 overall record.

“Anytime you win 32 ballgames it’s a great season, but I have to be honest with you: I have a great group of kids,” Boyer said. “Not only are they great baseball players, but they’re great kids. Academically, they work hard in the classroom. Out on the practice field, when they show up every day they try and take a business-like approach which, of course, makes it enjoyable. What our kids are really good at, when it’s practice time it’s time to work and when practice is over, hey, we have a great time together.”

The head coach paused, and then continued his thoughts:

“We’ve just kind of built this culture,” he said. “It’s a family atmosphere around here. Our older guys work with our younger kids and they kind of feel that responsibility to pass that legacy onto the next group. That’s kind of what we’ve preached here is that we’re going to be a family and we’re going to pass it on to the next group and see what they can do with it.”

… … …

IT WAS A VERY YOUNG TEAM BOYER PUT ON THE FIELD IN 2015 with four or five sophomores making significant contributions throughout the season. The team leader, however, was senior Josh Rolette, a power-hitting catcher who the St. Louis Cardinals selected in the 18th round of last June’s MLB Amateur Draft but who decided to head off to Kansas State instead of signing professionally.

The Wolves lost another key performer from a year ago when junior left-hander Mitchell Stone moved out of the school district and is no longer a part of the Shawnee HS program. Stone was 11-0 with a 0.80 ERA and 74 strikeouts in 61 1/3 innings as a sophomore.

This season, Boyer will rely heavily on the return of seniors Logan Franklin and Teddy Robertson, along with several very talented juniors. Franklin is a top-600 national prospect and will be a four-year starter in centerfield; Robertson will be a three-year starter at shortstop.

“Defensively in centerfield for us (Franklin is) rock solid; he’s going to make all the routine plays and he’s going to make some spectacular plays, as well,” Boyer said. “He has an above-average arm and runs well, and at the plate he handles the bat well; Teddy is going to be steady for us, as well.

“We depend on those seniors for that leadership and their experience … and they’ve been through the battles and the wars with us. They know what it’s about and they know what it takes to get the job done.”

Ryan (left) and Logan Franklin

Franklin has signed to play college baseball at Seminole (Okla.) State College, which is the same school his father Ryan Franklin attended. Ryan Franklin, a right-handed pitcher, was a 23rd-round pick of the Seattle Mariners in the 1992 MLB Amateur Draft and won 62 games and saved 84 others in a 12-year big-league career with the Mariners, Phillies, Reds and Cardinals. He retired in 2011 and now works in the Cardinals’ baseball operations office.

With those bloodlines and three years of varsity experience behind him, Logan Franklin is brimming with confidence right now. “You get all that nervousness out your freshman year and then your sophomore year and then it starts to get easier after that,” he said. “I feel like I’m prepared for just about anything we’ll see this season.”

When asked to reflect on last season’s dominant state tournament run, Franklin was direct and to the point:

“Our mindset was win or go home; there wasn’t a doubt in my mind that we could do it,” Franklin said before adding that the thought of failing to seal the deal at past state tournaments was never brought up. “I didn’t think about that at all because I knew we had talent and I knew we could get it done. We had good, close teammates and good friendships, good relationships; it was all good.”

Junior catcher Jake Taylor (No. 152, Oklahoma State), junior left-hander Eli Davis (No. 356, Kansas) and junior right-hander Tanner Sparks (top-500, Oklahoma) provide the core of this talented class of 2017 prospects. Sophomore catcher/corner-infielder Kade Self (No. 358, uncommitted) will also be asked to contribute.

The 5-foot-9, 150-pound Davis was 9-1 with a 1.07 ERA and 102 strikeouts in 65 innings as a sophomore. He was named the Most Valuable Player at last summer’s 16u Perfect Game World Series while playing for the Dallas Tigers, and was named to the all-tournament team at the prestigious PG WWBA World Championship in Jupiter, Fla., also while with the Tigers; he was all-tournament at the 16u PG WWBA National Championship playing with the Oklahoma Naturals.

Davis attended some developmental camps down in Arizona to work primarily on his hitting and also threw his first live intrasquad innings last week and reported his velocity was up noticeably from a year ago – he threw 89 mph at the 16u PGWS and 88 at the PG WWBA World.

“With me and Tanner Sparks, we just have to keep our pitching as good as it was last year,” Davis said. “Our defense is going to be good again, so that’s basically all we’re going to try to do. We have a third guy now (junior right-hander A.J. Barron) who’s going to get us some wins also, I think we’ll be fine.”

Boyer is excited about having the lefty Davis and the righty Sparks at the top of his rotation.

“Anytime you’re able to throw guys up there from the opposite sides it gives the opponent a different look,” Boyer said. “Both of those guys are two-year starters and Eli’s won 21 games in two seasons and Tanner’s won 17 for us, and both of those guys were instrumental I the run we made last year.”

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WHILE THIS IS BOYER’S 10TH SEASON AS THE SHAWNEE HEAD COACH, it is his 25th year at the school. He’s seen a lot of changes over the years, a lot of kids come and go, but he’s also watched from a front row seat while a solid foundation was laid and a winning attitude was established.

“I came in here as a snot-nosed kid at 22 and Jeff Shafer was our head coach and I was fortunate enough that he hired me to help him,” Boyer said. “I learned so much from Jeff about the game of baseball and not just about teaching the game of baseball but trying to teach these guys how to become young men and be successful when their careers are over.”

Davis, the somewhat diminutive but always dominant left-hander and outfielder (Kansas recruited him as a two-way player), transferred to Shawnee from nearby Edmond before his freshman year and immediately was welcomed in as one of the family.

“The people around here that are involved with baseball are just dedicated to us and what we’re trying to do and they understand what we’re trying to accomplish,” he said. And it all seemed to come together for the Wolves’ family last season.

Shawnee had advanced to the state tournament in 2014 and was sent home after a first-round loss, but with seven fulltime starters returning Boyer and his staff knew the team would be competitive in 2015. They went out to the Aggie Classic in Pensacola, Fla., over spring break where they went 2-2, so when they returned home their record was a pedestrian 3-3.

That’s when things started to click for the young Wolves. They went on a 15-game winning streak, and by the time they flattened their three Class 5A state tournament opponents by a combined 22-4 – including wins of 3-0 and 10-0 over Chickasha and Carl Albert in the semifinal and championship games, respectively – they had finished the season winning 29 of their last 31 games. It is worth noting that Carl Albert had won three straight Class 5A state championships and five of the last eight, but it had nothing for the sophomore right-hander Sparks, who threw a five-inning, two-hit shutout.

“We knew we were going to be pretty decent coming into the year but we went down to Florida and kind of messed around and got our record looking pretty ugly,” Davis recalled. “But as the season went on the pitching and defense looked pretty unbelievable and that was pretty much it for us.”

The community rallied around the Wolves once they reached the state tournament, including alumni of the Shawnee baseball program who had come up short in their own bids for a state championship.

“The past players, they came and talked to us before the state championship and told us how they wished they could have got it done and they really thought we could get it done. We took that as motivation to make sure we did get it done,” Franklin said. “We take a lot of pride in winning last year since that was the first (baseball) state championship Shawnee had ever won.”

… … …

THE SHAWNEE WOLVES BEGIN DEFENSE OF THEIR OSSAA CLASS 5A state championship on March 3 at home against McAlester, an opponent they know well from their days together in 5A District 4 the last four years.

There has been a shakeup in the district alignment this season with Shawnee moving into 5A District 1 with Noble, Guthrie, Piedmont, Woodward, Northwest Classen, Del City and Guyman; Noble was a state tournament qualifier last season. It’s yet another new neighborhood the Wolves will have to get used to.

After playing six games in the first 10 days of March, the Wolves will once again make the trip out to Pensacola, Fla., for the Aggie Classic from March 14-17, the place where it could be said they turned the 2015 season into a championship campaign.

“I think it helps build some camaraderie,” Boyer said. “This is a close-knit group and we go out there and we only play one game a day, so we’re able to go and do some things together as a group. It’s just good to get on the bus and get away from all the distractions that are going on here at school. We’re gone for six full days and it’s just us and it’s not just baseball. It’s an enjoyable time and it’s really good competition.”

When they return home, the schedule doesn’t ease up. Shawnee hosts its own tournament March 31-April 2 and will play in the always-tough Carl Albert Tournament April 7-April 9. The Wolves’ regular-season finale is a home game with Carl Albert, a rematch of last year’s state championship game. The Wolves are ready to go.

“I think we’re going to be pretty close to as good as we were last year,” the senior Franklin said. “With some of the younger guys, we’re going to have to step up and show them that we’re going to try to lead them to another successful year like we had last year … I think we’re in great position and I think we should win another state championship this year.”

Added Davis: “I think it’s going to be the same results. I have nothing but confidence in my teammates and I expect them to get the job done as much as they expect me to get the job done. I really think it’s going to be a great season.”

Boyer guards against such talk because baseball is nothing if not a quirky game. He knows that he’s been fortunate to have a lot of good kids who are also good baseball through the years and he recognizes that he has had other teams in the past that were good enough to win a state championship but were done in by injuries or poor play at the most inopportune time. Anything can happen, especially in this upper-class Oklahoma high school baseball neighborhood the Wolves now reside in.

“We enjoyed the adventure we had last year winning the state championship and we’re still excited about that but this is a new year and what we did last year has no bearing on what we’re doing this year,” the veteran coach concluded. “Our guys have done a really good job so far concentrating on what’s in front of us instead of looking back and tapping ourselves on our shoulders and telling us what a great job we did last year.”