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For the love of many games

By Shawn Linenberger - | Jun 9, 2016

At the turn of the 20th century, baseball was a national pastime. Small towns across the Midwest fielded teams of adult men from the community.

These men, who often worked 50 to 70 hours per week, managed to find the time to practice together for the sheer love of the game.

Many small towns in this area of Leavenworth County had teams, including Basehor, Jarbalo, Reno, Edminister and Dafer. The games would be community events. Families brought picnics, children played and adults visited. Games were played all summer and were a focal point of community engagement.

Local businesses would sponsor their community team.

Shawnee resident and filmmaker Mark Honer recently released the documentary “Town Teams: Bigger than Baseball,” a 40-minute film that tells of town team baseball years ago and its intense popularity across Kansas. Tonganoxie is one of the communities listed as having a town team in the film.

To see uniforms worn by players from the Jarbalo and Tonga Sealtest teams, visit the Tonganoxie Community Historical Society Museum, which has photos. The museum also has in its collection a glove used by one of the players from the Jarbalo Town Team.

Tonganoxie also had a football town team around which the community rallied. That squad also had some stellar sports names: Jess “Spider” Peters, Red Bedell, Babe McRill and Willis “Rawmeat” Peters.

Town-team days are long gone, but high school activities have taken their place.

School spirit has been prevalent in the student section and even has brought about rallying cries such as “T-O … N-G … I-E … Big ol’ Tongie” or “We, we want, a T-town beatdown.”

The community certainly has seen its share of champions. And in the past 15 years, that’s been the case in virtually all sports.

Girls basketball and volleyball have been a step away from a state championship contest, while the boys soccer team became the highest-finishing team sport with a Class 4A state runner-up finish in the fall of 2012.

The girls soccer team started its season slow in the spring of 2012, but a 9-2 stretch helped the squad reach state for the first time in school history. THS also was the lone public school among the four teams still in the playoffs. THS finished fourth at state that year.

Track and cross country teams have been solid for years, with the boys cross country 4A state title in 1991 being Tonganoxie’s only state championship.

Golf, which is one of the youngest THS programs, has qualified for state and challenged for the individual state title.

Baseball and softball programs both have made state appearances, while THS football has advanced into the state playoffs on several occasions.

Boys basketball has state appearances to its credit. And though none has happened in recent years, the team did come oh so close in 2002 with a substate championship loss to Atchison.

That leaves Chieftain wrestling, a program that has knocked on the door of individual state titles and has a regional championship on its resume.

Individually, many student-athletes have gone on to compete in college, including those at the Division-I level in men’s basketball, women’s volleyball, football and track. Some of the D-I schools THS students have represented are Kansas State, Nebraska, Wichita State, Cal State-Bakersfield, Alabama-Birmingham and Arkansas.