An Oklahoma high school baseball coach had to punch a knife-wielding man and hold him down until police arrived because no one else was there to protect 13 teenage boys under his care.

Kevin Lomon, head baseball coach at Cameron High School, was traveling with his team on Aug. 16 when one of his players called him around 9 p.m. at their Shawnee hotel, saying a man had just pulled a knife on him. Lomon told the boys to get in their rooms and call 911, then stepped into the hallway himself.

According to a Shawnee police report, Christopher Stevens was standing by the elevator with an open knife. Lomon told him to put it down. Stevens kept coming. Lomon punched him several times and held him until officers arrived. Two knives were recovered at the scene. Stevens was arrested. No one was hurt.

"I react and I didn't have much time to think about it," Lomon told WIS10. "I don't think I'm a hero. I just think I would do it again. I think a lot of coaches, most coaches or most people I know would do the same thing."

Lomon's attorney, Joey McCutcheon, says the hotel failed its guests. "He literally put his life on the line for his players and that's something that they're going to remember throughout their life," McCutcheon said. The attorney is alleging the hotel should have removed Stevens from the property before the confrontation escalated. The hotel declined to comment.

WIS10 covered the confrontation straight, centering Lomon's account and the police report. The second outlet assigned to this beat, the Santa Clarita Valley Signal, ran an unrelated story about a Hart High graduate making his MLB debut — no coverage of the Oklahoma incident at all.

The open question is why a coach had to be the security detail in the first place. Lomon was responsible for 13 boys at a hotel where a man with two knives was apparently allowed to remain on the property. The hotel won't say what it knew or when. No resource officer was on the trip. No hotel security intervened. A coach with his bare hands filled the gap.

Lomon told his players the lesson: "Nobody's really going to care what your batting average is five years from now. They're going to care what kind of person you are." He proved it. The question is why the system required him to.