Basketball, baseball and reunions

Perkins County Schools was host to the Midwest Boys and Girl’s Elite College Showcase Tournament held at the PCS facilities May 29-30.

Hats off to Jeremy Struckman for his work in getting the event to Grant and then putting all the things together that it takes to have a successful event. 

I think he did an outstanding job of doing that. Yes, there were some hiccups but that is not that strange when it is the first time you have done something like this event. 

For the most part, especially after getting the first day over and getting teams and individuals there, it smoothed out a bunch. 

The event was designed to give basketball players a chance to be seen by college coaches below Division 1 status. I don’t know if there were a lot of coaches at the event.

I assume there were a few, but I would bet that a number of them looked at the streaming process as a way to see the players.

In watching some of the drills and events that went on the first day, I think it was pretty easy to see that some players were more skilled than others and some looked older than high school kids. 

On Sunday, I found out why that was, regarding the older looking situation.

While visiting with one of the players, I asked him where home was and his reply kind of surprised me when he said Jamaica. 

He had come to the United States and attended a couple prep schools and actually had played at the junior college level, playing at Independence Junior College in Kansas. 

He actually knew where Pratt Community College was in Pratt, Kansas. I didn’t ask if he played against Pratt CC, but he knew it was one of the colleges in the Kansas Jayhawk Community College Conference. 

He was at the Grant event with the hopes of a college coach seeing him and offering a scholarship. He was older than most of the players attending but his aim was like any of the others.

Watching the event, you could see players that were very talented. Still, I was amazed at the fact that players would come from such a distance to display their skills. 

The Jamaica player was there on a select team from Oklahoma. There were players from California, New York, and I am not sure where all. There were some pretty talented Nebraska kids there also. 

I didn’t see too many players that I thought “Why did they come?” In my opinion, the Grant boys who were there did a good job of competing with the others, regardless of what the drills were or when they started playing some games. 

I don’t know if we will ever host another event like this one, but if organization of the event was one of the deciding factors, there will be another one sometime.

Huskers Big 10 champ

 Also this past few weeks, Nebraska’s baseball team picked up some nice honors. The Big 10 Championship team also had their Head Coach Will Bolt honored as Big 10 Coach of the year. 

Also picking up some honors were Spencer Schwellenback, who was chosen as the Big 10 Player of the Year, and Max Anderson was named the Big 10 Freshman of the year. 

The baseball team had an outstanding Big 10 season and it will be interesting to see if they can make it to the College World Series that is held in Omaha.

Nebraska won the Big 10 Championship outright this season. There was no Big 10 tournament due to the late start because of Covid-19. 

(Their College World Series  dreams ended Monday night with a 6-2 loss to Arkansas.)

Reunion weekend

This past weekend there were a couple of fun events in town.

On Friday night, the 1981 state championship basketball team held a reunion of sorts at the golf course and opened it up to the public.

It was fun to go out and visit with the people that were there. A number of players were there from that team and to visit with them and hear what they are doing now was very interesting. 

In addition, Coach Tom Lawson and former Athlete Director and Princpal George Yerger were also present. It was a very good to get together to talk about old times and some of the antics that went on during that time. It was also good that it was a number of years after some of the things had happened!

Then on Saturday night, the Grant Alumni Banquet was held at the high school and it was exciting to see some of my former players and former students whom I had not seen in a number of years. 

All-in-all, you throw in a garage sale on Saturday and it was a very busy and interesting two weeks.