How Kentucky high school duo worked together to make Mr. Basketball, Mr. Baseball history

Walking down the hallways of Bowling Green High School, Turner Buttry and Patrick Forbes greeted each other with some prestigious superlatives.

“Mr. Basketball,” Forbes would say to Buttry.

“Mr. Baseball,” Buttry would respond to Forbes.

In the fall of 2021, the two friends were looking to bring home these awards, but not certain they would. No high school in Kentucky had ever housed Mr. Basketball and Mr. Baseball winners in the same year.

But throughout the course of the 2021-22 school year, the two set their sights on history.

“I think you’ll win Mr. Basketball,” Forbes told Buttry before the basketball season started.

“Bro, I think you might win Mr. Baseball,” Buttry told Forbes after watching him hit three home runs and a grand slam in an early season game.

‘We just clicked’

Forbes played basketball and soccer throughout middle school but wanted to play collegiate baseball. He dropped the other two sports in pursuit of baseball, but Buttry — set to play basketball for Eastern Kentucky University in the fall — said he is a complete athlete.

“I actually tried to get Patrick to play basketball this past season,” Buttry said. “He can 360 (dunk), he can windmill, he's an athletic dude.”

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Buttry began to take basketball seriously in the third grade, playing under Jeff Sheppard, a two-time national champion with the Kentucky Wildcats in the late 1990s, and with his son, Reed, a member of Kentucky’s 2023 recruiting class.

Before fully settling on basketball, though, Buttry played baseball until the eighth grade. He said it was his primary sport at first, but pitching took a toll on his shoulder so he stopped.

Ironically, he met Forbes, now a Louisville baseball commit, soon after moving to Bowling Green his freshman year of high school.

Buttry and Forbes hung around a group of mutual friends throughout that year, and the two began to work out together at Link Elite Training during the summer time. The training sessions proved beneficial for their playing careers, as well as their friendship.

“I think I gained like 60 pounds over the course of high school,” Forbes said.

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Both avid sports fans, they’d watch the NBA Finals and the Super Bowl together. Other times, they’d go to another friend’s house to go swimming in the pool or shoot baskets on his court.

Forbes said the two would mess around in class from time to time as freshmen, but it helped them grow closer early in their high school years.

“Anytime that we would see each other, we just clicked and it was a good friendship that I think will last for a while,” Buttry said.

‘I can really win this thing’

Going into their senior year, the two supported each other in their pursuits of the Mr. Basketball and Mr. Baseball titles.

What started as a preseason goal slowly became a midseason possibility. The time that the two spent working out over the summer was beginning to pay off.

When Forbes told Buttry he was going to win, Buttry figured he had a chance. He wasn’t completely sure, but once he got midway through the season, he hit a turning point.

“'I think I can really win this thing,” Buttry thought.

The team started the season 14-3, relying on Buttry’s sharp shooting from deep to aid them. He finished the season as a 52% 3-point shooter, averaging 23 points per game. They ended the year 26-7. Forbes went to all 15 of Bowling Green’s home basketball games, all wins.

In March, Buttry earned Mr. Basketball honors for the state of Kentucky.

“That's crazy, man,” Forbes texted Buttry. “You actually did it.”

“You’re next,” Buttry said.

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A week after Bowling Green’s basketball season ended, the baseball team played its first game.

Like Forbes did for him, Buttry went to many of Forbes’ home games. And he brought a crowd with him, as many students were settled near left field grilling out during the games. At one point in the season, Forbes was leading the state in home runs, on top of compiling other impressive numbers. He ended the season with 105 runs scored, 99 hits, 15 home runs and a .508 batting average.

In June, a friend of his sent him a text saying “Congrats.”

“For what?” Forbes replied.

That’s when his friend sent him a tweet saying that he’d won Kentucky Mr. Baseball. Though the news was broken to him unconventionally, the mission was complete.

Not only for Forbes, but for Buttry as well. The two made history as the first Kentucky students to bring home Mr. Basketball and Mr. Baseball in the same year for the same school.

“We kind of spoke it into existence,” Buttry said.

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‘You’d see a lot of growth’

Buttry and Forbes have shifted their goals heading into their college careers.

Buttry hopes to help the EKU Colonels win their conference and make the NCAA Tournament. , where his 3-point shooting fits with a team that attempted the third most 3s (33.2 per game) in Division I basketball last year.

“It's what I like to do, and I think that'll get me on the floor, even as a freshman at this level,” Buttry said.

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Forbes aspires to crack the starting lineup as a freshman at U of L and, down the line, become an All-American and MLB first-round draft pick. That would have been a difficult projection four years ago.

“If you would have saw me when I was a freshman, you'd see a lot of growth,” Forbes said.

Their path to college came through working together. Now on different campuses, they’ll aim to carry that work over to the next level.

“A lot of sacrifices have been made between me and (Forbes) in high school,” Buttry said. “And I think that it was great to see a lot of those sacrifices and hard work pay off.”

This article originally appeared on Louisville Courier Journal: Kentucky's 2022 Mr. Basketball and Mr. Baseball share close friendship