The first-year Bowie News sports editor covered the 34th annual Fantasy of Lights Tournament, a basketball cornucopia, on Saturday throughout the day.
The Fantasy of Lights was the brainchild of the late John Seddon back in the early-1980s as a fundraiser for the Southwest Kiwanis Club.
Seddon loved basketball, and his passion has spread to others such as Carmen Lozipone, Terry Shelton and Brent Spray – today’s tournament caretakers.
After the Southwest Kiwanis Club disbanded, Seddon approached the Retired School Teacher Association about maintaining the tournament, and they did.
This information was culled from: www.fantasyoflights.org.
Overall, our area teams fared quite well at the tournament.
The Bowie girls and Bellevue boys were runner-ups in the large school girls’ and small school boys’ divisions, respectively.
Nocona’s boys placed fourth in the small school boys’ division, and Bellevue’s girls won two games and earned ninth-place in a 12-team field.
There were 15 teams in the large school girls’ division, so what the Lady Rabbits accomplished last weekend was certainly remarkable. Bowie was the smallest school in the large school girls’ bracket.
There were 12 schools in the small school boys’ division. We had two teams finish among the best. That’s what I like to see.
I ultimately decided to cover Saturday’s games, rather than go both days. I figured it would be better to cram all the basketball I could handle in one day. See the complete timeline in the weekend Bowie News.

Editor’s Note: The Storm Center column is the expressed written views of sports editor Eric Viccaro and not The Bowie News.

Bowie’s Courtney Brady (left) and Kamryn Cantwell were named to the Fantasy of Lights Tournament team last Saturday at D.L. Ligon Coliseum on the Midwestern State University campus in Wichita Falls. Click on the image itself for the complete photo. (News photo by Eric Viccaro)