The world still didn’t know Eddie Bowman’s name after he pinned Landon Martin in 36 seconds last year to win the Class 2A state title at 132 pounds to cap off an undefeated season.
So he worked harder. He took fourth in a tournament in Iowa, where, according to Trinidad coach John Burns, “even the kids who weren’t good were really good.” He returned to Colorado with the old adage in mind: To be the best, you have to beat the best.
In the CHSAA state tournament inside Ball Arena on Saturday night, he beat Caleb Camp 7-2, having never looked in real trouble, and denied the Buena Vista senior’s bid for a fourth straight title in the process.
Now they can’t ignore the Trinidad senior. Bowman wrestled at 138 pounds all year until the regional tournament, when he dropped to 132 to challenge Camp.
“I told myself when I was in 138, ‘Why stop there?’ There’s another guy I want to chase, and that’s Camp,” Bowman said. “I was working out at like 1 a.m. at the gym. I looked in the mirror and I was like, ‘What are you doing? Just cut weight, just do it.’”
And so began the pursuit. Bowman walked through the bracket leading up to the championship match, pinning his first two opponents and beating Highland’s Tyler Varra by major decision in the semifinals, 15-4. That wasn’t enough. In fact, he was “ticked” with himself all night for having not pinned Varra or won by technical fall.
After his semifinal match Friday, he did what his coach has told him to do after every match, win or lose, since his sophomore year. With a hauntingly straight face, he sprinted off the mat and into the tunnel, like the match was a speed bump in the road to the title.
Having beaten Camp, the Colorado State-Pueblo commit stopped to bask in the moment. The dust had settled. The peak was conquered. The 2A goliath had fallen. All without a doubt in his mind.
“Man, I’m so proud of him, he deserves it,” Burns said. “He lives for this. Lives for this. Every day, he’s working to get better in some capacity.”
Perhaps to a degree unlike many others around the state.
In January, he won the 2024 Top of the Rockies tournament, beating Fort Lupton’s D’mitri Garza-Alarcon, who became a 3A four-timer Saturday, and Ponderosa’s Thomas Verette, who won his second 5A title in as many years Saturday.
“The work I put in? No one works as hard as me. After I beat those 5A and 3A guys, I asked them, ‘What do you guys do extra?’ And they said they go to the gym to maintain their weight. And I looked at them and said to myself, ‘This is why I’m a different beast,’ ” Bowman said.
What does he do extra, you ask?
“I work out every morning and I hit the gym, of course. But there’s this guy, I call him the old man (his stepfather), he puts me through some extreme workouts.”
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