There’s not a whole lot more that Andrean senior Drayk Bowen could’ve accomplished this season.
The Notre Dame recruit became the first player from the Region voted Mr. Football, which was announced Friday.
The 6-foot-2, 230-pounder won the Butkus Award, which recognizes the top high school linebacker in the country.
He led the 59ers back to the Class 2A state championship game, where they lost 20-10 in a rematch with Evansville Mater Dei after winning the title in 2021.
“He met some goals,” Andrean coach Chris Skinner said. “I do offseason meetings with all the players, and after last season, he wanted to win Mr. Football. That was one of his goals. The Butkus Award wasn’t really on the radar. We knew about it, but that wasn’t something specifically he wrote down. He wanted to be the defensive player of the year in the area, actually. And he wanted to go back to Lucas Oil (Stadium).
“In these offseason meetings, they’re pretty conversational. I don’t really guide those conversations. I’m just writing down what the guys’ goals are. You look at that list, and there’s some pretty high bars to clear here, and he cleared pretty much all of them.”
Indeed, Bowen, the 2022 Post-Tribune Football Player of the Year, leaves an indelible legacy as he completed final exams at Andrean on Wednesday ahead of enrolling at Notre Dame for the second semester that begin Jan. 17.
He had 144 tackles this season, with 19 for loss and five sacks. He also forced four fumbles, recovered one and had two interceptions.
As a running back, he rushed for 1,784 yards and 26 touchdowns. He added 10 catches for 228 yards and three more TDs.
Remarkably, Bowen played virtually the entire season with a partial tear of the PCL in his left knee, suffering the injury in an opening loss to Merrillville. It didn’t require surgery, but it did necessitate managing.
His knee was more sore in some games than others, bothered him more in some than others. But he dealt with it throughout.
“They said I was good enough to play,” Bowen said. “I had to do some stuff for it, work out on it, do some extra stuff to fine-tune the muscles around it.
“The first couple of games, it was not 100%. But toward the end of the year, I was doing pretty good with it.”
Still, every weekend, Bowen received treatment, with efforts to get the swelling down. Just about every week, he was ready to go for practice on Monday.
The biggest scare occurred for Andrean’s regional game against Lafayette Central Catholic, when there was legitimate uncertainty about whether he would be able to play at all after getting particularly banged up in a sectional final against Bremen. But he gutted it out.
He wore a brace for that game, for the semistate game against Fort Wayne Bishop Luers and for the state final.
The 59ers limited Bowen in practice, including in the postseason, and he played a reduced number of reps in certain games, particularly on offense.
“In the games where we needed him, he didn’t want out,” Skinner said. “And he played special teams, offense, defense. He truly was a warrior.”
Bowen also suffered what proved to be a left high-ankle sprain against Mater Dei. It was apparent he wasn’t his usual dominating self following the play late in the first quarter.
“We taped it up,” Bowen said. “We went to the locker room and taped it up again, tried to do some stuff for it. But it was a high-ankle sprain, so it did not feel good.”
To that point, Bowen had been otherworldly in the postseason. His numbers for the first four games read this way: 218 yards rushing and three TDs against LaVille, 148 yards and three TDs against Bremen, 227 yards and two TDs against Central Catholic, 358 yards and five TDs against Luers.
His performance against Luers was especially one for the ages.
“Any level of sports — professional, collegiate, high school — some players are going to rise to the occasion of the moment and some are not,” Skinner said. “That doesn’t really have anything to do with physical skill set. It’s a mindset thing.
“Call it whatever you want — the heart of a champion — but very clearly, Drayk’s of that breed that’s going to rise to the challenge. He’s not going to falter in those big moments. This postseason, he showed that, and last season, too, the way he took over the state championship game.”
In Andrean’s 21-9 win against Mater Dei in the 2021 state final, Bowen bruised for 171 yards and three TDs, and he had a strip sack that all but clinched the title. Even hobbled for most of this season’s state final, he ran for 95 yards and had seven tackles.
“It was all toward winning the state championship,” Bowen said when asked about elevating his play in the postseason. “I wanted to go out back on top, and I was going to do whatever I could. We had the dream that’s where we wanted to be. We got there, but it didn’t end the way I wanted to. The whole postseason run was about getting back to Lucas Oil. Me and my team worked super hard. We got there. It just didn’t end the way we wanted to.
“It was a pretty great run. We had to battle a lot of adversity, a lot of injuries, some tough games that didn’t go our way. That was an overall theme of the season. A lot of things could’ve taken our season down. But our team did a great job of overcoming adversity.”
Skinner described how Bowen was an even better player this season than last.
“To the casual observer, you might not notice some of the smaller things,” Skinner said. “But if you were to pop on the film from last season when we decided to move him to inside linebacker and just watched the way he played, the technique he used, and then popped on the film at the end of this season, he is obviously a very talented and gifted individual. But the way he’s using his skill set now with technique, he’s just continued to refine his craft at linebacker. He’s never been satisfied with anything.”
Bowen agreed he made strides this season.
“Definitely playing in the box as an inside linebacker, that was new last year and something I needed to work on,” he said. “This year I did way better. Watching film, I was way better in the box, making tackles behind the line of scrimmage, getting off blocks. I did a much better job with that this year.”
After the season, Bowen took off a week to rest and to allow his body to heal a bit. He has been preparing for the U.S. Army All-American Bowl on Jan. 7 in San Antonio. After that game, he’ll spend a week at home before heading to Notre Dame.
“I hope people saw that I worked hard on and off the field,” Bowen said. “I was a role model and someone kids could look up to. I’ve also strived to be the best at everything. I’ve always wanted to be known as the best at whatever I was doing. Being able to work that hard to be known as the best, not necessarily being the best, but seeing all the work I put in, that’s something I definitely want people to remember.”
