Catching up with Cortland Carney
July 29, 2008 @ 8:24 a.m. by Joannaby joanna
Cortland Carney has been out of the City League for a decade now, which is aging me oh-so-much. (There’s a lot of things that do that to me.) But my first two years in this job, he played basketball his junior and senior years at South. So I remember him very well (I seem to remember more about those first two years in Wichita than I remember the last two. Go figure.)
Anyway, Carney stopped by the house last night because his niece is my stepdaughter. So he chatted for awhile and I had the great idea to put him in the blog today (he reads the blog, by the way.)
He runs MAYB tournaments and also coaches some players with Steve Young that you guys will probably recognize on the blog — Perry Ellis, Gavin Thurman, Dreamius Smith, etc.
Carney had quite the basketball career. His freshman and sophomore seasons he played for Steve Eck at South — his sophomore season they won the 6A title. Eck left for Butler and Charles Williams took over as South went 10-11. Then Mark Potter coached Carney’s senior year and South finished third in 6A.
Carney went to Butler to play for Eck his freshman year, followed Eck to UMKC, where Eck was an assistant. Carney didn’t play that year because he was rehabbing a torn ACL. But that whole coaching staff was fired after one season, so Carney followed assistant coach Gary Abner to Hutchinson. Abner had been an assistant at UMKC and Butler. Carney finally finished out his college career at Newman — under Potter.
What a crazy time. But he’s obviously a loyal guy.
July 29th, 2008 at 2:56 pm
Loyal to whom? Definitely not loyal to his schools. Sounds to me like he was more apt to follow the coaching staff that would play him more. Which is most definitely the easier road.
How is loyalty defined as leaving your school to follow the coaching staff that just quit/was fired?
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July 29th, 2008 at 7:07 pm
Joanna, this reminds me of the end of march when the Ncaa tournament is over, and then again a month later when the Nba finals are over, theres nothing on television to watch. Who cares? When the pizza hut delivery guy shows up at your door are you going to bring him up in a blog?
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July 29th, 2008 at 8:38 pm
Only if the pizza guy is a former all-city and all-state player who one time beat SE and Derby (when they were #1 in the state)almost by himself, should joanna give him a shout out. Cortland is a great young man who stuck by a school in South, when a lot of kids were transferring. Then he followed Eck a couple times and ended up playing for a great coach in Potter at Newman. Who knows how good he would have been if he didn’t tear that ACL. It is nice to have a “Where are they Now?” blog from time to time.
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July 30th, 2008 at 10:50 am
sprtsfan22 — I’d write about the Pizza Hut delivery guy if he were a former athlete in the area. That would be interesting.
As for methatiswho, I agree that it’s nice to kind of have a where are they now. I have a feeling that sprtsfan22 doesn’t know Carney or didn’t see him play _ I mean, he’s 10 years out, but I bet there’s some of you on here that remember him. So, I’ll continue writing — running the risk of boring some of you, but pleasing others.
Hey, it’s the nature of this job. There is never once that I have made 100 percent of the readers happy. How could I? The winning team is usually happy. The losing team is not. I deal with it. I’m certainly not 100 percent at home, either. I figure I make one person happy all the time — my infant son. Because as long as I give him his bottle, he loves me.
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July 31st, 2008 at 11:14 am
Cortland was not only a heck of a ball player, he was a great kid. His leadership skills were very evident. I loved watching him play at South with Darren Williams and Antwoine Childers.
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