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Face to Face: Tonganoxie’s Kevan Welsh

By Shawn Linenberger - | Apr 28, 2015

Name: Kevan Welsh

Born: Concordia

Family: Wife, Carissa; daughter, Quinn (7 weeks); and dog, Wicket.

Occupation: Technology support manager for HNTB.

Dream job as a child: The first four-sport professional athlete: football, golf, basketball and baseball.

Interesting fact: Welsh said he’s “oddly talented: at catching grapes” — with his mouth — lobbed at him from far distances.

Digging Deeper: Welsh grew up in Miltonvale, a town of 500 in north central Kansas. He’s the youngest of three brothers, so growing up often included gathering neighborhood kids for baseball games, building forts in the woods next to his house, mowing the lawn into a golf course to practice and attempt trick shots — or trampoline basketball.

“It’s exactly what it sounds like,” Welsh said about the final activity.

Welsh’s graduating class had 16 students, 12 of whom were together from kindergarten through high school graduation. It was the largest class in the school, he said.

“I loved growing up in Miltonvale and the close-knit relationships I still have with many people to this day,” he said.

After graduating Miltonvale High School (now known as Southern Cloud), Welsh left for college to attend Ottawa University to major in mathematics and play football and golf at OU.

“After failing calculus III into my second semester and that I didn’t care for football much at the college level, I realized my perfect plan coming out of high school wasn’t all that it was cracked up to be,” he said.

He had an internship in the information technology department and eventually changed his major to IT studies.

He moved to the Dallas-Fort Worth area for two years before moving back to the Kansas City area. Two months after returning, he met his future wife on eHarmony.com.

His older brother Phillip and Phillip’s wife Julie had been living in Tonganoxie when Kevan and Carissa move here in 2011.

Kevan is contemporary worship director and Carissa youth director at Tonganoxie United Methodist Church.

“On any given day, you’re likely to find us with a group of teenagers working in the community, playing games in the parking lot of the church, worshipping with my guitar in the youth room or rehearsing with the full band in the sanctuary,” he said. “My family and I love Tonganoxie and plan to be a part of this community for years to come.”