Oklahoma Tournament of Champions Book is Available
A comprehensive look at the first 50 years of the high school basketball Tournament of Champions has been compiled and published by Tulsa Public Schools and Terrell Lester.
“Oklahoma’s Tournament of Champions: A Half Century of High School Basketball at Its Best” is being distributed via the Web site: tulsaschools.org.
Individual copies of the 80-page, soft-cover publication are $20. A limited number of copies will be available during the 51st edition of the Tournament of Champions, Dec. 28-30, at the Mabee Center on the campus of Oral Roberts University.
Each year of competition has been singled out, from 1966 through 2014, complete with a 500-word overviews, records, all-tournament selections and capsule recap of each championship game. The same format holds for the girls bracket that was added in 1999.
Lester has been involved with the tournament since its inception. As a sports writer with the Tulsa World; he covered each of the first 10 tournaments, invited the teams, drew the brackets and began compiling the individual and team statistics that are the basis for the book.
As historian and scorebook keeper, Lester has continued his work, annually updating tournament records and consulting with Tournament Director Mick Wilson on the selection of teams.
Lester’s coverage of high school sports, from the coaches and the personalities to the players and the outcomes, has earned the respect of sports figures and athletics officials in every corner of the state.
His work and his contributions to Oklahoma high school sports have been recognized by numerous journalism associations, community groups and coaches’ organizations. He is a member of the Oklahoma Coaches Association Hall of Fame, the Oklahoma Basketball Coaches Association Hall of Fame, the Oklahoma Girls Basketball Coaches Association Hall of Fame, and the Tournament of Champions Hall of Fame.
For more than a decade, he has served as Editor at Large for Newspapers.
To order the History of the Oklahoma Tournament of Champions book, see www.tulsaschools.org, or call Newspapers at 918-254-1515.
Updated 12-21-2015
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