By Joanna Chadwick

Larry Dennis, who would have been a senior at East High, plans to enroll at Sunrise Christian.

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By Joanna Chadwick

The Greater Wichita Area Sports Commission will host the Johnny Bench Awards on Thursday night, giving an award to the nation’s top college catcher. It will also honor the top area college male and female athletes, top pro athlete and top boys and girls high school athletes.

Who would you choose for the top high school athletes? The three boys and three girls are below — is it a good list? Is anyone missing?

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by joanna

Goddard grad Derek Norris certainly caught national attention when the new Oakland A’s catcher hit a walk-off home run on Sunday. That was cool watching him on SportsCenter this morning.

So who’s next? Will it be a recent grad? Like Perry Ellis? Or a current high schooler, like Conner Frankamp?

What about the alum of the area? Who will make some noise?

By Joanna Chadwick

I talked to Craig Steven Jr. this afternoon after hearing that his sister, Taylor, the new girls basketball coach at Carroll, had been in an accident. Craig said frankly that Taylor’s got an angel because she was thisclose to a much worse outcome.

According to Craig, Taylor was at a stop sign where trees blocked the oncoming traffic. A dump truck full of dirt suddenly came into the intersection at the same time Taylor was going through. Taylor was injured and will wear a neck brace for about a week, Craig said, but the whole family is thankful that clearly an angel took care of Taylor.

So thankful to hear that Coach Steven is OK.

by joanna

I’m simply looking for who your favorite team is. I don’t care if it’s high school, college, pros, international, whatever. You can give me a reason or just name your team.

I’ll get it going.

My favorite MLB team is the Minnesota Twins, favorite NFL is the Minnesota Vikings, favorite college basketball is Missouri, college football team I like to see win is South Carolina (because then my husband is happy!), favorite country in the Olympics is the USA! of course!

North senior Conner Frankamp was named to the 12-member USA Basketball U17 team that will compete in the world championships.
The team will spend two more days practicing in Colorado Springs before heading to Europe. The FIBA U17 World Championship is June 29-July 8 in Lithuania.
The USA team will train and compete in Gran Canaria, Canary Islands, from June 22-25.

by joanna chadwick

I think this is a very fair question. The bigger class schools might be able to say they have the most top caliber athletes, but Class 4A can say it has the toughest road to a state title.

Look at football, softball, basketball — there’s so many good teams in the area, so many good teams in the state. If you win a 4A title in any sport, you can safely say you earned it the right way.

Andale football coach Gary O’Hair talked to me about just that topic today:

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by joanna chadwick

Several years ago I had an open discussion link each day, just giving all of The Blog readers a chance to spout off, discuss, argue on any topic they wanted.

I’m going to try it again here.

What’s on your mind today? Is it summer ball? Summer workouts?

by joanna chadwick

Class 4A’s proposal to drop its football numbers from 64 to 48 (and go to 6-team districts) was voted down by Class 3A, 2A and 1A. 4A had hoped to create some more equality because of the vast difference in school sizes — Cheney and Goodland have 197 students in grades 9-11, while Maize South has 564.

But the proposal had to be passed by not only 4A, but 3A, 2A and 1A because those classes would be affected if the proposal passed.

Here’s my question — should the KSHSAA change classifications? Should 4A divide into two classes? 6A and 5A combine?

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by joanna

Kevin Steiner has been named the South football coach. Steiner, 32, spent three years as a South assistant. He replaces Cory Brack, who is now the Cheney coach.
“We have that connection and I know the kids are buying in,” Steiner said. “We’re definitely not where we need to be, but we’ve got that foundation set, and we need to continue to make sure we have that foundation. With the change of leadership in June, it helps to make sure that we can build on what’s already there.”

Steiner, who is from Centre, played football at McPherson College, where he was an assistant for two years after graduation. He currently teaches U.S. History and special ed. His brother is the Centre coach.