TMS player drains historic shot at school
Kody Campbell possesses a round piece of history.
A Tonganoxie Middle School seventh-grader, Kody scored the first basket by a TMS basketball player in at the new TMS gymnasium.
The score came with 3:53 left in the first quarter in a game Jan. 8 against Clark Middle School from Bonner Springs.
Kody, however, didn’t know he would be keeping a memento of his historic field goal.
Middle school athletics director Phil Jeannin, in the days leading up to that first game in the new gymnasium, had an idea — give the basketball used to make the first shot to the Tonganoxie player who made the shot.
Jeannin found a well-used basketball to use as the game ball to start the game. When the first Warrior basket was made, he traded out basketballs. He wrote on the basketball some vital statistics, such as what date the basket was made and at what point in the basketball game.
According to Jeannin, the basket came on about a 15-foot jumper near the free-throw line.
Kody admitted that he wasn’t expecting to receive the basketball.
“It was kind of surprising,” Kody said.
Jeannin said he had hoped to conduct a similar ceremony some 18 years ago when the former junior high school, now the high school’s west campus, was built.
However, he said students moved into the school in the spring, which meant basketball season already had finished.
“I just thought I wanted to do something for the kids in the building for a first basket,” Jeannin said about the new middle school. “It’s not going to happen again.”