On Jan. 24, I wrote about how elite Rural-District 7 was for both girls and boys basketball.

In fact, it was the only district in the entire state that had the top two ranked teams in it.

The No. 1 ranked Wildwood girls played No. 2 Williston in the Rural-Region 4 Final.

The top-ranked Wildcats defeated the Lady Red Devils (19-4), 60-45, to advance to Lakeland last week. Williston defeated 2-time defending state champion Hawthorne in the district semifinals and again in the regional semifinals.

Wildwood (25-0) completed an unbeaten season with a 65-43 win against Holmes County (Bonifay) in the Rural state championship game.

At the time, the No. 1 ranked boys basketball team in the Rural classification was also Williston.

The 2-time defending state champions dropped to No. 2 and Hawthorne moved up to No. 1 despite a 66-54 loss at Williston on Jan. 17 and a 55-50 loss at home to Williston in the district championship game.

The Hornets advanced to their eighth final four under head coach Greg Bowie with a 45-43 win against Williston in the Rural-Region 4 Final, in what was essentially the de facto state championship game on Feb. 17.

“Just playing a team like Williston, who is the two-time defending champ and probably one of the better teams in the state any class this year, so to pick up a big win like that kind of gave us that motivation,” Bowie said. “There’s not going to be too many teams out there in our class like them, so once we got past them, we knew we had a really good chance of coming out here and winning.”

Last week in Lakeland, the Hornets had no problem in both the state semifinals against Graceville, a 69-44 romp last Wednesday, and in the state championship game against Crossroad Academy (Quincy), an anticlimactic 59-38 victory on Friday night.

Hawthorne (20-3) never trailed against Graceville and nearly led from start to finish against the Scorpions in the title game, overcoming an early 2-0 deficit and taking the lead for good, 3-2, on an and-one by senior Chasion Wilson (game-high 16 points) with 5:39 to play in the opening quarter.

“They were locked in after that win (Williston),” Bowie said on Friday night. “A lot of stuff we didn’t have to say in the locker room because the guys were echoing it by the time we got in there and they were talking among each other like, ‘Hey, now we’ve got a chance. We’ve got to go down there and take care of business,’ and I mean I don’t recall the exact score, but I think two wins by double digits, and we held both teams under 50 points. That’s pretty good defense.”

It’s the third boys basketball state title in program history (1987, 2020, 2025).

Making the feat even more impressive is the fact that they did it without C.J. Ingram, a 2-time Class 1A Player of the Year after averaging 24 points, 8.5 rebounds, 3.7 assists, 3.7 steals, and 1.9 blocks per game

Ingram, who officially became a Gator on Feb. 19, transferred to Montverde Academy to play basketball during his senior year.

There were doubts after he transferred and questions on whether Hawthorne could win a state title without Ingram.

“When C.J. left, everybody thought we weren’t going to do it,” said senior Leland Johnson, who, along with senior Darian Bowie, junior Kyler Ingram and sophomore Nathan Jennings, won a football and a basketball state title at Hawthorne. “That’s my first cousin, so I believed in him more than anybody. So, when he left, that made us work even harder.”

Despite not starting its regular season until Dec. 20 due to football ending late, the Hornets reeled off six straight wins to start the season.

“There was a lot of motivation,” Bowie said. “We heard a lot of the noise when C.J. transferred, not from our people but from the outside, neighboring counties. It was like there was an automatic win for other teams, you know, ‘No C.J., Hawthorne is done,’ and the thing about it, those guys are still really close to C.J. They talk all the time. It’s still a family, so he’s just as much a part of this program still, even though he’s at Montverde.”

Hawthorne benefited from the transfer of Chasion Wilson (Lake Worth), who led the team in scoring this season (13.9 ppg), but make no mistake, Ingram was still a huge loss.

“It was a luxury having a guy that could go get 30 every night, so let me just clear that up,” Bowie said with a laugh. “It was a luxury, but him leaving, it forced us to get it done by committee so other guys had to step up. Some nights it was (Dacarion) Debose, some nights it was (Kelvin) Baker, some nights it was Leland (Johnson), other nights it’s Chasion (Wilson), so it did force us to kind of get it done by committee and other guys stepped up but trust me, having him was a luxury.”

Bowie said this year’s team and his 2020 team, which finished 25-3, are “very similar.”

“That particular team (2020) had one guy,” he said. “We had one guy average in double figures that year, Torie Bowie (19.1 ppg), and the rest of the guys defended well and they did all of the small stuff. I just told Torie, ‘Hey, you go out there and score, we’re going to take care of everything else,’ so this team, we were able to get more scoring, but it was the same defensive mentality.”

And as Bowie’s son, Vonte, noted on Facebook after the win, the Hall of Fame numbers speak for themselves.

In 18 seasons as head coach, Bowie has a 76% winning percentage (354-110), nine straight 20+ winning seasons, 13 straight district titles (15 total), eight final four appearances, two state runner-up finishes and two state titles.

It’s also a total of seven state titles combined for Bowie and his younger brother, Cornelius Ingram, since 2020.

Ingram, Hawthorne’s football and girls basketball coach, has five of his own.

Bowie is the offensive coordinator for the football team, which won back-to-back state titles in 2022, the school’s first in program history, and 2023, following their 25th straight win. They’ve also been to five straight state championship games.

The girls basketball team won consecutive state titles under Ingram in 2023 and 2024, following their first in 2020.

Not bad for a small rural school that almost shut down in 2018 due to low test scores.

They turned it around in the classroom, and thanks to Ingram and Bowie, they’ve excelled on the gridiron and the hardwood floor.

“I think the key is we’re coaching these guys year-round,” Bowie said. “The football guys are playing basketball, they’re the weightlifters, they’re on the track team and we coach all the sports, so we’re with these guys year round. So that mentality that they have in football they bring it to basketball, they take it to track, they take it to weightlifting, and then, of course, C.I. goes and coaches the girls, so our program is being coached by the same people.”