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Kansas Hardwood, Volume 2
Classes 4A, 5A and 6A
Basketball is King
McPherson’s hoop tradition spans generations
T
here’s no truth to the rumor that new-born babies in McPherson are acquainted with a basketball nearly as quickly as they are with their mothers. It just seems that way at times. Indeed, basketball success has been seen as a birthright for the boys and girls at McPherson High for the past halfcentury or so. “There’s always been a myth that when a child is born in McPherson, a basketball is put in their crib,” said long-time McPherson Sentinel sports editor Steve Sell, who now writes for Mid-Kansas Online. “You can’t go down a street in McPherson without seeing basketball goals in the driveways.” McPherson and basketball go hand in hand. There are just a handful of high schools in the state who are identified with a specific sport — Collegiate and tennis, Kapaun Mt. Carmel and golf, Smith Center and football, Bishop Miege and volleyball, to name a few. And then there’s McPherson and basketball. The boys have won 11 state titles and finished second 10 times. During a 10-year period from 1990-99, they won the 5A title six times. The girls have claimed eight championships and placed second four times. It’s a tradition in the round ball sport that actually goes much further back than the days in the 1960s when the Bullpups challenged Wyandotte for basketball supremacy in the state. In the 1930s, the McPherson Globe Refiners won an AAU national championship and made up half of the goldmedal winning 1936 U.S. Olympic basketball team in Berlin, the first time basketball was part of the official program. But, sports historian Carol Swenson of McPherson said the hiring of Jay Frazier as the high school basketball coach prior to 1957-58 is what “marked the beginning of McPherson’s move into the role
By Harold Berchard as a major player on the Kansas prep basketball scene.” Swenson said Frazier’s simple philosophy and enthusiasm for the game raised the bar to new heights in McPherson. He was followed by Mike Henson and Kurt Kinnamon, the only three head coaches the boys’ program has had in the past 55-plus seasons. The girls’ program, which was formed in the early 1970s, has had seven head coaches, but only two in the last 20 years — Scott Schaefer and Chris Strathman. “To this day, it continues to be the dream of almost every kid growing up in McPherson, boy and girl alike, to someday wear the red and white uniform of McPherson High and to experience the thrill of running out the tunnel onto the Roundhouse floor as a Bullpup,” Swenson said. “McPherson kids start going to the games by the time they’re 5 years old and they want to grow up and be Bullpups,” Sell said. “They start playing for the Junior Pups as soon as the third grade. This year, a seventh-grade middle school team was added to get the ball rolling a year earlier.” Kinnamon grew up in St. John and was one of the state’s top players in high school. He played at McPherson College from 1984-86 and quickly became aware of the basketball program at MHS. He played with former McPherson great Brad Underwood in the KBCA All-Star Game and heard about this court they called The Roundhouse. Kinnamon was an assistant coach at Lyons under Phil Anderson in 1987-88. Anderson was a graduate of McPherson High and very proud of that fact, according to Kinnamon, who moved to McPherson for the 1988-89 school year and was the freshman coach under Mike Henson for five years. He spent two years as the head coach at Canton-Galva before taking over at McPherson when
Henson moved to Germany to teach and coach. Kinnamon said he doesn’t feel as much pressure to keep the tradition going as he does to make sure that his team plays the “McPherson Way.” “We want to really pressure the ball defensively and share the ball offensively. That is the thing I may be most proud of and that is when people tell me that we play the ‘right way,’” he said. “As a coach, I would be naïve’ if I didn’t recognize that the tradition, and kids wanting to be Bullpups has helped produce a tremendous run of basketball players. It has been great players that have inspired young people to want to be a part of our tradition.” The Bullpups have had a lot of great ones, headed by the likes of Steve Henson, Josh Alexander, Christian Ulsaker and Ryan Herrs. And who could forget the names of Jordan Fithian, Brian Henson, Vic Chandler, Jeff Kline, George Czaplinski, Brad Underwood, Dave Leach and Andy Berlin, just to name a few. Steve Henson, who later starred at Kansas State, is considered the best allaround athlete in school history. Josh Alexander finished his career in 1996 and is still in the top four in scoring, rebounding and assists. Ulsaker is the school’s all-time leading scorer and Herrs totaled over 1,000 points, 500 rebounds and helped the Bullpups win three state titles. Kline was part of three state title teams in the 1970s and Chandler was an all-state football and basketball player in the early ‘70s. Brad Underwood holds the career scoring average of 24.2 points per game, Berlin set a single-season rebound record and Czaplinski and Leach were part of three consecutive one-loss teams in the early 1960s that challenged Wyandotte. See McPHERSON, Page 7