By Rick Kozlowski, The Journal, for the West Virginia Sports Writers Association
MARTINSBURG, W.Va. — There was no place Tyson Bagent would rather have been on Dec. 2 than Wheeling Island Stadium for the Class AAA state championship game.
Once there, there was no place Bagent would rather have been than in a corner of the home locker room.
Yes, like most athletes, he’s very superstitious.
Indeed, the quarterback from Martinsburg found himself in both places – at a corner locker inside of Wheeling Island Stadium on the first Saturday in December.
And, more importantly, from his standpoint – and validating his ritual ä he led the Bulldogs to a second consecutive title-game victory over Spring Valley as Martinsburg won 44-16 for its 28th straight triumph.
While ‘nobody puts Baby in a corner,’ as a line from a famous movie goes, Bagent was right at home in the little cubby hole he claimed as his own.
“Just doing everything the same as last year,” Bagent said.
Right down to winning most valuable player honors for the undefeated and nationally ranked Bulldogs.
He completed 14 of 21 passes for 232 yards and two touchdowns in the victory. He ran for two other scores, kind of a new wrinkle in his game from his junior to senior year.
Bagent ran for eight touchdowns to go with 41 he threw during a season that saw him complete 72 percent of his tosses.
“He’s been the face of our program for the past couple of years,” Martinsburg coach David Walker said. “He brings a consistency and a calm demeanor. He gives you the idea everything will be OK. He’s a cool customer and nothing gets in his way.”
Not even playoff teams.
Bagent broke the state record for best completion percentage in one playoff game and topped 80 percent on completions in the four-game postseason.
“What he did in the playoffs, you haven’t seen since J.R. House,” Walker said. “We don’t throw on every down like they did, but his completion percentage and accuracy…”
Such a sage comment from the Mountain State’s all-time winningest coach in the playoffs. Walker had no idea at the time that Bagent was to win the House Award as the state’s top quarterback.
It’s official today for Bagent as the House Award winner as the top high school quarterback in the Mountain
State as presented by the West Virginia Sports Writers Association.
He’ll be honored at the 72nd Victory Awards Dinner on May 6 in Charleston.
It’s been quite a week for Bagent.
On Sunday, he was named a first-team Class AAA all-state quarterback.
On Monday, it was announced he had won the Gatorade State Player of the Year Award.
And now he stands on the roof of the House, so to speak.
Yes, it’s been quite a season for the A-plus student in the classroom.
“Coming into the season, the expectations were high, not only for the team but for me, as well,” he said. “I knew what I was capable of doing. I knew I had to be sharp and had to go out and do it every game. That sharpness kind of paid off – 80 percent in playoffs, 72, I think, on the year so it speaks on how hard not only I worked but how hard the team worked.”
Since the state championship game, he’s received increased recruiting interest from Division I schools after a fairly narrow incursion prior to and during the season.
Bagent finished his season by completing 197 of 274 passes for 3,199 yards. He was intercepted just four times.
He’s a three-year starter for Martinsburg, but it took an injury in the first game to another starting quarterback to move him into the lineup and atop the depth chart as a sophomore.
Bagent threw 97 touchdown passes for his career and nearly 8,000 yards.
He’s been accurate as a passer throughout his career.
There is something to Bagent’s right arm.
Genetics, maybe.
His father is a world champion many times over in arm-wrestling.
Tyson Bagent is a champion, too, twice over in West Virginia high school football as the Martinsburg program won its sixth title in eight years with the most-recent crown.
‘The state championship is a lot more special more than any individual award,” Bagent said. “That comes first and nothing else really matters.”
Bagent collected a lot of each one.