It’s obvious that I need to either talk to my co-worker Paul Suellentrop (WSU beat writer who sits right next to me — our chairs bump sometimes — but has been out quite a bit on vacation) or I need to read his blog, shockwaves, more or just read the WSU stories more that run in the paper. The reason: It looks as though Mason Felter, a Bishop Carroll grad, is going to be at WSU along with Brett Steven, as walk-ons.

Which means Brett follows Taylor and Craig to WSU, while Felter follows his dad.

I do want to point out a familiar lament for the City League - -why are there so few City League kids going to be Shockers? The top girls players from the area aren’t going - -Taylor Steven was one of the few, although Heights sent a couple, including Tenia Green and Kelsey Richardson. Kapaun’s Angela Buckner has had the best career there in my decade-plus of covering area high schools.

As for the boys, I still remember when I came to interview in 1996 and I believe it was Darin Williams who decided to head to WSU and it was huuuge news. Maurice Evans then signed as well — before moving on.

So why does WSU not draw the top players from the area? Is everyone really that anxious to get the heck out of here?

Your thoughts welcome.

My boy Jeff Martin and I were were having a  conversation about gamesmanship earlier today revolving around Jason McElwain. If you don’t remember McElwain, he was the autistic high schooler from New York that captured the hearts of many Americans by making it rain from behind the arc in his only basketball game appearance.

Me, being a fierce competitor, told Martin that I don’t think I would have let him hit all those shots. That at some point, I would have to send one of them into the crowd. He laughed at me, but understood where I was coming from. He said that maybe after the third one he would have to put an end to the crowd pleasing show. To me three would have been two too many.

Would it have been bad gamesmanship to block his shot?

Miami has Arthur Brown. But let’s not pencil lil’ brother down as a Hurricane just yet.

Rival’s No. 2 rated running back and ninth best football prospect in the country East’s Bryce Brown is out enjoying the luxuries of being one of the best prospects in the country. Which means that he’s being wooed by any college football program that can get him on campus.

As you read this Brown is on his way back from a college tour with the Potential Players program operated by his mentor Brian Butler. While Brown verbally committed to the Hurricanes, he insists that it’s not yet a done deal. Miami has several things going for them - one being his older brother wearing a Hurricane uniform, but he wants to check out his options and see what the others calling have to offer.

Why shouldn’t he. He’s been up front with Miami telling him that he still was going to take his five official visits and that’s all he owes them. And though he won’t say it, I believe that Miami shouldn’t be real worried.

The “superstar treatment” as I like to call it doesn’t come often. He’s made the sacrifices that takes to be at the level he is at so he deserves the right to enjoy the perks. On this recent trip he got a chance to check out Illinois, Purdue, and Missouri which he liked a lot. He plans going to St. Louis for their game with Illinois on August 30. He also has plans to visit Oregon and Clemson and perhaps Ohio State and Texas if they fit into his schedule.

So it could get pretty interesting this recruiting season. Then again it could be pretty quiet. The only person that knows is Bryce Brown and nobody should fault him for making sure he uses all the time he has to make sure he’s making the best choice.

South coach Tony Johnson is having his final offensive line camp — it’s his fourth of the summer — this weekend.

Here’s Johnson’s e-mail sent today:

ANTHONY ALABI current starting left guard of the Kansas City Chiefs ( also NFL Network analyst summer program. Guy wants to be in the media someday! Lol) will be here Saturday for our final ASSEMBLY LINE FIVE O-Line camps at Wichita South High School Starting at 9:00 a.m.  I am looking forward to this last camp and would ask that if you and any of your players want to come or just to meet this great man and great player please do not hesitate to call me.

 Check out tonyjohnsonmotivates.com for more info on this man who obviously is more than a high school football coach.

September 4 (Thursday)

Carroll at Heights

September 5 (Friday)

Hutchinson at Rockhurst (Kansas City)

How crazy is this? Talk about starting the season with a bang. BC and Heights on Thursday night to jump-start City League play and then Hutchinson hits the highway to take on perennial power Rockhurst.

There might not be a better weekend of high school football.

Carroll QB Blake Bell is getting a lot of buzz for someone who hasn’t thrown the ball in a high school game. So it will be very interesting to see how he fairs in his first game against a pretty good defense. I don’t know much about Heights but they are pretty athletic on the defensive side and they have Ian Knight one of the top defensive ends in the state according to Rivals.

Hutchinson vs. Rockhurst will pit two football powers against one another. Hutchinson finished last season as the fourth-ranked team in USA Today’s Super 25 prep Football regional rankings while Rockhurst was seventh.

http://www.usatoday.com/sports/preps/football/poll/2007-regional-ranking.htm

So what do you think? Has there been two better games to start the football season?

Yep, I’m giving you a job today. Your job is to rank each class for the upcoming season.

It doesn’t matter if you name only the No. 1 team, that’s fine. If you want to go top five, top 10, great.

I’ll get you started — Hutchinson is No. 1 in Class 5A. Whew. That’s going out on a limb and it’s all I can do today. Too much thinking, too much setting myself up for ridicule.

So it’s up to you.

Do I need to say more? Or is that title long enough for you?

Here’s what it is: It’s an national All-Star camp in Orlando, where the players — Bryce Brown (East), Jaydan Bird (Conway Springs and Blake Bell (Carroll) — who are some of the “nation’s top prep football players” according to the news release, will spend three days in training with former NFL players and coaches. “The Football University’s All-Star Camp will focus on teaching technique and skill to the players, as well as show players how they stack up against the nation’s best just weeks before their season openers.”

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The Pretty Prairie rodeo starts tonight and runs through Saturday. I’ll be there on Thursday doing a story. Jonathan will be the man on Friday and Saturday.

I have to admit I’m looking forward to it, even though it’s not exactly my forte.

Speaking of the rodeo, Corey Hutchinson, a Maize junior was named to the state high school  rodeo team and will participate in the National High School Finals Rodeo starting Sunday in Farmington, N.M. He qualified in bareback riding.

Another post in the “I aim to please category.” A comment came that there’s way too much love here on the blog for boys basketball and not enough for girls basketball, so here we go on the girls.

Checked out hoopgurlz.com’s rankings — Derby’s Joanna McFarland is ranked 27th, while Carroll’s Julia Marshall is ranked by position and Andover Central’s Tiffany Bias is in the top 100 for the 2010 class.

I talked with Chris Lane of the Wichita Legend, and then got an e-mail about the Wichita Bearcats from Michael Marshall.

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After watching Conway Springs’ conditioning for football this morning — 6:30 a.m., ugh for me — I started thinking way back to my days of high school volleyball and the conditioning we went through. I vividly remember the heat and humidity of the gyms that had no AC. It was terrible.

But the worst part was the wall squats. Just that burning that hit your thighs. Man, that was terrible.

So what was the worst for you? For that matter, what did you like about conditioning.