By Joe Geren
Few high school basketball players score 2,000 points in their careers, but West Central High School senior point guard Shelby Bowman has done it twice.
No, she doesn’t have 4,000 points.
On Dec. 9 in the Monmouth United Holiday tournament, she scored 21 points in a 45-24 win over Ridgewood and 28 more points in a 54-15 romp over West Prairie. That day’s total gave her 2,004 points for her high school career.
But that career includes a freshman season at Notre Dame High School in Burlington. She scored 124 points for the Nikes in the 2020-21 season.
On Dec. 20 in a home 56-35 win over United, Bowman needed four points to total 2,000 in a West Central uniform. With 2:19 left in the first half, she sank two free throws to reach that plateau. She ended the night with 22 points for the game, 2,018 for West Central, and 2,142 for her career.
Despite being double-teamed by every foe, Bowman is averaging 29 points a game this season for her Biggsville, Ill., school. Her shot, she said, is her greatest asset on the hardwoods, and the numbers appear to agree.
It’s “the range that I have,” she said. “It makes me really hard to guard at all three levels, especially the way I’m being guarded. Being able to score in a variety of different ways makes it harder for people to guard me. I’ve seen (double-teaming) pretty much every game this year.”
But she’s not just a shooter.
“We run everything through Shelby,” West Central head coach Tyler Klossing said. “When Shelby is not scoring the ball, she’s just as good of a passer. She’s not our team, but she’s a very big key to our team. She’s very unselfish. You see players like that who can score 2,000-plus points you think all they want to do is shoot. She looks to pass. It’s pass first, shoot second.”
“I try to get my teammates involved as much as I can,” Bowman said.
The 2,000 number may not have quite registered in her mind yet, so “I just go out every night and just play the game that I love,” Bowman said. “All the hard work has paid off, and all the support that I’ve had along the way is pretty amazing to see.”
The COVID-19 pandemic year benched most Illinois high school athletes but not Bowman. She enrolled at Notre Dame High School in Burlington as a freshman. She was a Nike for the 2020-21 season.
“I think they had a couple games (in Illinois) but it wasn’t a full season,” she said. At Notre Dame, “I did play JV, but I played quite a bit of varsity. I was the sixth man off the bench and got quite a few (varsity) minutes over there.”
She played in all 21 games of Notre Dame’s 19-2 season, which ended with a 65-57 loss to Springville in the regional championship game. That snapped the Nikes’ winning streak at 17 games. They fell one victory short of a state tournament appearance.
As a Nike freshman, Bowman shot 41.2 percent from the field (42-for-102), including 20 3-pointers in 52 attempts.
She returned to West Central as a sophomore and has started all three seasons with the Heat. Playing basketball “since about (age) two or three,” she said,
Bowman has also gained valuable experience playing with the Illinois Inferno traveling team out of Jacksonville.
Bowman enters the 2024 portion of the season with 435 points in 15 games and the Heat are in a pennant race.
“Our goal is win a (Lincoln Trail) conference championship and a regional championship,” Bowman said. “I think we’re on track to do that. We’re getting better each game.
“One of the toughest teams in our conference is Annawan, and we were able to beat them (60-49 on Dec. 4), so that was a big win for us,” Bowman said. “Coming up, we have Princeville coming back from break. They’re a pretty tough team. They’re undefeated in the conference. They’re one of our main targets right now.”
West Central (10-5, 4-0 LTC) and Princeville (11-4, 4-0) are tied for first place in the Lincoln Trail Conference. They’ll face off at Biggsville on Thursday, Jan 4. Tipoff is set for 7:30 p.m. Annawan is tied for third place with Wethersfield and Mercer County, each with a 3-1 league mark.
Bowman plans to play basketball in college, “but I don’t know where yet,” she said.
When she decides, a new era begins.