He tried out for the Kansas State baseball team. Joel Applebee, who grew up in Russell, Kansas, with a football and basketball in his hands, and who starred in the American Legion baseball league, entertained scholarship offers from community colleges, but he yearned for Manhattan, the education, the people, and the possibilities that could come upon graduation.
As the Kansas State football van crawled down North Stratford Lane on Monday morning, the towering, red-brick St. Thomas Aquinas Catholic School affixed with a beautiful steeple topped with a spire dominated the horizon in Wichita, Kansas, offering a warm, welcome hug to Will Anciaux, who smiled as the van decelerated and finally stopped near the front doors to a place the Anciaux family has known for many years.
Phil Cunningham fancies himself as a sports historian. The Kansas State men's basketball assistant coach, wearing a Powercat polo shirt on Tuesday, recalled the Wildcats' rich basketball history, and called the rise of K-State football "the greatest success story in college football in my lifetime." The veteran coach, both as a head coach and as an assistant, has seen some things since he earned his master's degree in sports administration from Mississippi State in 1992.
When we last spoke with Luke Smith, the 27-year-old former star point guard and two-year assistant coach under head coach Casey Alexander at Belmont, was the first Kansas State assistant coach to pull open the large glass doors to the Ice Family Basketball Center, and he quickly joined Alexander in his office to begin work.
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