Cottonwood Connection

K-18 Series

Season 5 Episode 3 | 24m 25sVideo has Closed Captions

Join us as we look at the long-standing tournament that turns a small town into a Mecca.

Aired 10/06/2024

Cottonwood Connection

K-18 Series

Season 5 Episode 3 | 24m 25sVideo has Closed Captions

Join us as we look at the long-standing tournament that turns a small town into a Mecca.

A look at the history and stories behind this long-standing tournament that turns the small town of Lucas, Kansas, into a baseball Mecca one week of the year.

Aired 10/06/2024

Problems with Closed Captions? Closed Captioning Feedback

Cottonwood Connection is a local public television program presented by Smoky Hills PBS

Cottonwood Connection

K-18 Series

Season 5 Episode 3 | 24m 25sVideo has Closed Captions

A look at the history and stories behind this long-standing tournament that turns the small town of Lucas, Kansas, into a baseball Mecca one week of the year.

Aired 10/06/2024

Problems with Closed Captions? Closed Captioning Feedback

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[Music] Baseball has been a part of small-town Kansas life since small Kansas towns were first being established. In the late 1940s, a group of rural communities along Kansas Highway 18 formed a youth baseball league that has carried on to become one of the state's generational sporting traditions. (gentle music) (upbeat music) Baseball has always been considered America's sport, and it dates way back.

During the Civil War, when people were in camp and stuff, they played baseball. And as Kansas was being settled after the Civil War, primarily, there were baseball teams formed everywhere. There were rural baseball teams, as far as a group in a rural community, say within a township, would have a baseball team, and all the small towns did, and they were very competitive. You can read through the old newspaper articles, and during the summertime, they were talking about what teams were playing what, and most of them were double-headeders, and local newspaper editors and publishers in the town was saying how close a game it was, and we're gonna get those boys next time, and next week, they would get together, they'd go horseback, by buggy, go watch a baseball game, and later, when the cars got going, you brought in people from 30 or 40 miles away on the other teams. So it was very competitive. People followed their teams, not all the teams had uniforms, but some did, some of them did. And some of the photographs you see of the uniforms, they're all the same, except maybe the Studley 9 had a big S, and maybe somebody from Moreland had M's on their uniforms. Uniforms are basically the same, but they had some sort of logo on them, and usually the town, and sometimes a number, but not always, but yeah, it was very, very big, and it continued on. K18 League was first started by towns along Kansas Highway 18. Right after World War II, the kids had, there was nothing to do. And of course, you're talking about after 1945, A.A.

Ziegler, he started a baseball, the land here was donated to him. There was probably 12 teams on the first year. My name is Allen Thaemert Damer. I grew up in Sylvan Grove, Kansas, and that's where I played cookie ball. I was only probably nine years old when the cookies started. Jim Winkler, and I played baseball when the K18 started. My brother was on the first K18 team in Sylvan Grove, and I went to see his games. I think Sylvan Grove and Beverly and Lincoln and Vesper, Lucas and Barnard, Lurey and Tesscot. I think those, you had to be on the K18 road. Natoma was the furthest town to the west. Lincoln, yeah, we, all along Highway 18. And little towns like Vesper, Denmark, you know, that haven't now had a school for 40, 50 years. But back then, everybody had a baseball team. And I guess because it gave something for the kids to do. And Sylvan Grove won the first two years of the cookie league. We played a lot of baseball when I was young in the cookie. It just seemed like that was the favorite sport at that time for most people. And it was competitive. We knew all the kids in the area. And even the small towns didn't have enough, didn't have any trouble getting enough players to play. That was kind of neat. And you played shortstop, is that right? Yeah, at third base and short. Yeah, those are the only two positions I remember ever playing. And then I played cookie baseball. And I played with Al Ziegler. I played Legion baseball for Al Ziegler. Al was one of those guys that just loved kids. And he would do anything for the baseball program. I knew Al Ziegler. He owned the lumber yard in town. I mean, just a working guy. Baseball was a part of his life. He promoted it, loved it. He was one of those that, if you disagreed with an umpire, he always said it was his job to disagree, not your job.

Okay. And fundamentals were very important to him. You had to, when you come to practice here, over and over again, we do the same thing. You didn't do it and make a mistake in the game. Yeah, he was very thorough. He's one of those old time coaches you'd just love to still have. In high school, when we were playing baseball at Soan Grove, a lot of us would just stop in and visit Al. Because we knew he had been in baseball a long time. I have very fond memories of Al Ziegler. He was a real super individual. Yeah?

Yep. And a good coach.

Yeah. But a better person. He was a good example for kids. He wanted to instill quality values for all the kids. Sportsmanship went a long way. And all the coaches understood that. And it just went from there. It thrived. During the early 50s, there was just teams along Highway 18. And then it expanded. There was four or eight regionals. The winner of each regional came to the state. But then the bigger towns formed their own associations. And K18 got smaller. Which we still have teams from Goodland, Kansas, almost all the way to Manhattan, that play K18 baseball. I started with K18 baseball, playing as a kid. Of course, everybody here in town played K18 baseball. Back then we had a dirt infield. Every practice you lined up on the edges, walked the infield, pick up rocks. Because there were always rocks. And things have changed since then. But this diamond here is really neat. Back then, base paths were 82 feet. And then in the late 90s, we went to a traditional baseball field. 90 foot base paths, 60 feet, six inches for the pitching mound. This was all things put up later, but this is as good a ball diamond as there is. So we tried to make it exactly like a major league field that we're playing on. From early on, a core element of the longevity of the K18 tournament, has been the involvement of the Lucas Lions Club. I taught school in St. Louis for three years after I graduated from college. I came back here and I was in town probably a month now. And Al invited me to come to Lions Club and become a member, he was my sponsor. So how long have you been in the Lucas Lions Club? 60 years. Lions Club is huge. They take care of the gate. And they're wonderful people that take care of the gate coming in. They take care of all the concessions. And we have a great concession stand. And the public address system, all the announcing the score book, the official score book. Kept score for a lot of state tournaments, running a score book for about 38 years. The operators that run the scoreboard, the pitch count, all these are volunteers from Lions Club, which is just, it's amazing we get that many people. To do such a great job. We have about 35 members now that work the state tournament. Adam Baker, Lucas Lions Club president. Most of the improvements that we've done down here over the years have been a group of people that have gotten together and wanted to keep K-18 baseball here in Lucas. It was doubtful a few years ago whether or not the city could continue to host it without some significant improvements. So the Lions Club got together and we decided that we wanted to keep it here. And it wasn't just Lions Club, there was other people too. But we wanted to keep it here in Lucas. And we got together and figured out, well, what we need to do is just to start making some improvements. And that's what we did. Bleachers was one of them, the new press box concrete in the front part. We've improved the outside fence and the gates air conditioned score... When we used to keep score, you had to sit in the sun. Now you're in...we're in an air conditioned press box. That's very nice. Yeah, I bet, yeah, that's a nice improvement. Yeah. And we're still not done. We're still improving, but a small town of 350 people. We don't have a big pot of money to invest in these activities. So a lot of it's down to fundraising and writing grants and taking our time and doing it ourselves. Town is very, very supportive. All the merchants in town, businesses support it. Yeah, I think it's extremely important because it's the one thing we can do on a statewide basis that identifies us with other projects. Cause we have a lot of, Lucas has a lot of art projects in it and the people that come into the state tournament visit all those. I think that's really important. It's not very often you can go into town and visit the Garden of Eden. Our Lions Club and the city of Lucas help out so much. They make the tournament possible. And without them, we would struggle. And there are communities that do struggle without the volunteers. I think we need to, as a community, to continue to work at it and make it the best softball, baseball facility in the area. And I think we need to promote the girls' K18 softball tournament too. Cause that's become a big project. I think most people generally like to see a small town hosting a larger tournament. You go to a lot of tournaments in bigger cities and it's great to see a nice facility. And a lot of the big cities do have great facilities, better than ours. But we've needed to keep it here. I think it would do a disservice to the people that have put a lot of time in over the years, keeping it here, that if we just let it go. So that was our main drive as the Lions Club. We dress up the outfield and we have bunnings up and welcome signs. And it really is like coming home. I mean, it's just, everybody enjoys coming here. Long as weather doesn't affect us too much, we get along real well. And we all need the rain. We don't ever want to turn off the rain. It's always welcome, but we just like to get our baseball in. So we've managed to maintain an association and the kids come here. And I don't think Lucas could be more of a neutral site for anybody. No one has a home field advantage here. Well, actually we started in 49, but our first state tournament wasn't until 52. So we were just an association for the first couple of years and then we, after everybody started joining, we broke it up into eight regions. My name is John Walz and I'm the Assistant State Commissioner for K18 Baseball. I started out as a regional commissioner out in the West area. At one time, K18 Baseball had 100 teams, which is amazing. The winner from each region came to the state. You had 8 teams show up from all over. You know, you didn't know what to expect. And we have a traveling trophy that Al Ziegler created, which it still to this day travels, I believe 1971 was the first year. And a plaque is added to that trophy every year. And that trophy goes with the winning team. It's presented to the winning team. It shows all of the winners. They take that back to their hometown and put it around different businesses in the town to kind of promote that they won the state tournament. And they also get other trophies besides that to keep. Ellis has had taken second, third and fourth two or three times and just could not get over the hump. I'm David Wildeman. I've been a part of Ellis for 25 years as a teacher and over 15 years as a baseball coach. Most of those years have been high school baseball with mixed in K18. I was an assistant for K18 in 2018. That was a team that got fourth place at state at Lucas that year. So in 2019, I took over. We have a historical poster, the Bill Foreman historical poster that Rita Sharp produces with Lucas Publishing, which gives all of the top four finishers throughout from 49 to present. To see your team on the list of teams that have won here, I think that's a pretty big achievement. I think most people that have ever played here in a tournament role will probably remember their time being here, whether they won or they've lost. Ellis has been to state many times and many times and they were second, one, two, three times, as I recall, and then there were some third and fourths in there. Finally, 2019, they broke through. So going into the season, yeah, we knew we had a lot of key players back, expectations high, and we want to push those expectations. I always felt like as a coach, you need three ingredients to have a really high successful season, and that is, of course, it starts with the players. You gotta have talented players, in some cases super talented players. So it starts there. Second thing is they have to be coachable. Be willing to do the simple things. I always say my motto is small things done well, allows big things to happen. So pay attention to details, tweaking your swing to get better, those types of things. So I had very coachable players. And then the third thing is just quality leaders that push each other on the team. And they were, for sure, a lot of experienced players that wanted to take it to that next step. They just loved the game of baseball. It didn't matter whether we're practicing it or playing a game, they just had that passion for baseball. So those are, I guess, were the attributes that really helped us. So when I played as a kid, my brothers, older brothers, kind of followed them to start with. Both my older brothers actually were on state championship teams. So kind of a big tradition even in WaKeeney when I grew up. And my team that I went through actually finished third. So quite a bit of tradition there as well. So that excitement obviously carried me over to the coaching side of things. And I wanted to emphasize that to the players, the experience there at the K18 level, to make it to state and perform well at the state level. Ellis finally wins the state tournament. And it was pretty exciting. And they finally got a win in a storm delayed game that ended up being late. So there was a couple of rain delays to begin with, with that game and whatnot, I think, lightning strikes. So it delayed it a couple of different times, like 30 minutes and stuff. So, and of course the extra innings going into it added to that excitement as well. So I believe the game probably finished right before midnight. So by the time we got back into town, it was probably pushing probably one o'clock, 1.30. Ellis was so excited that they ended up having a police escort after midnight coming into Ellis. I guess the message got sent out. I was just told that I needed to lead, you know, the travel van back into Ellis. And hopefully there would be some supporters and whatnot, and there's people out welcoming us back. And of course just honking and whatnot, just the excitement that we had. They were so excited to win and it was a great game. Deputies had the lights going when they came into town. Got escorted into Ellis with the championship. It was, it was just, it was great. Ellis just, was just tickled. They knew, you know, the background, the tradition that Ellis has always had, you know, those runner up seasons being that close. And the parents were great supporters as well. We needed that energy to be able to perform at that level. And they really helped us. All the businesses took turns. They each had the trophy for a while and everybody wants a picture with it. So made it kind of neat. And it was a special season 2019 state championship that we ended up with, with a good group of kids, for sure, quality players. On our program, we have the history of K18 baseball. And every year, I don't know how many people came back, would come back and we have a plaque here. You know, they're always looking at that. I played in that game. I was here that year, you know, there's a attorney from Lincoln, met his girlfriend here, okay, to be his wife. Yes, that he's still with today. Lots of stories like that. Over the years, I've talked to people, people say, "Where are you from? "You're from Lucas.

" Oh, I played in Lucas. I played in baseball in Lucas in whatever year they played here. And then you got to watch your grandson play in the K18's camp? Harlan, Harlan Pancost. He's your grandson. He's my grandson, yeah. Was it fun getting to watch him play ball here? Oh yeah. I came every time, sit right behind that catcher. I was sitting there the whole ball game. The city's out here, you get a small rural town, and they're a lot of the same. So all of them want an identity of some sort. If you had a good ball team, it gave your team an identity. And you could go to another team and say, you know, "I'm from Lucas.

" Oh, you must know so and so and so and so that plays on the ball team. So as an identity for the team that was really good, it is also an identity for that community. Not only that, there's a lot of other things that draw people to Lucas too, not just baseball. It's a small part of our town, but it's a pretty big historical part of our town. Just this last weekend, we were at the restaurant out there. And of course, one of the guys from Sylvan saw another guy that was on the team, hadn't seen him in 20 years. And first thing he said, "Hey, we're looking at getting the team back together.

" (laughs) When I grew up, summer baseball was it. You didn't have the travel teams and stuff. You didn't have the May ball for basketball, for football camps and stuff. It was baseball specifically. And I think we've lost some of that, but K-18 has always been there. It gives everybody something to look forward to and it's stable, it's there year after year. Again, back to Lucas, it's so well organized there. Having that organized league also helps change because you have to change constantly to keep something alive. So very open to change and listening to what towns are asking for in coaches and see if it'll work. And we run it by them and let them make the decisions. But you have that stable platform to go to year after year. And just the tradition, having it at Lucas every year, I said, going through that, when I was a player versus a coach, it's magical to me. It's just wanting to get there to have the players experience it as well. If anybody wants to come out and see good baseball, we're here every year, the end of July we have our state tournament. We got a good thing going here and it'll keep going. Kids that love baseball are gonna play baseball. So we're tickled that we have so many kids that still wanna play the sport. (gentle music) (upbeat music)

Cottonwood Connection is a local public television program presented by Smoky Hills PBS