A wild shot that banked in cost Kansas City Kansas Community College’s Lady Blue Devils a chance at one of the Jayhawk Conference’s biggest upsets of the season.
Tied 64-64 at No. 15 ranked Labette Saturday, Labette’s Shameka Tubbs threw up a contested shot from the free throw line that banked in with 23 seconds remaining for a 66-64 lead and the Lady Cardinals stole the ensuing in-bounds pass that sealed a 69-64 win.
“A great opportunity to get a much-needed victory over a ranked opponent,” KCKCC coach Joe McKinstry said. “We had two chances in the final minute to tie or take the lead and we just didn’t get it done.”
The loss left the Blue Devils in fourth place at 5-6 in Region VI play and in jeopardy of missing out on a home game when regional playoffs begin Saturday. KCKCC is the host of league-leading and No. 3 ranked Johnson County (10-1) Wednesday while Fort Scott (4-7) closes at Brown Mackie (1-10) with a chance to pull even with KCKCC. Labette, meanwhile, stays tied with Highland for second place at 9-2 with those two teams colliding at Labette Wednesday.
Beaten 77-67 at home earlier, the Blue Devils charged to a 22-16 first quarter lead and led 36-32 at halftime on 43.8 percent shooting. But the Blue Devils could net just 8-of-27 second half shots in a game that was tied five times and had three lead changes. However, the Blue Devils did not score from the field in the final four minutes although Labette never led by more than four points in the final quarter until the final seconds.
“Their zone defense made us look flat,” Labette coach Mitch Rolls told the Parsons Sun. “We had some matchup problems. They don’t have a true post and we had our posts guarding hybrid forwards and we didn’t do a good job of running our zone breakers.”
KCKCC’s Brie Tauai led all scorers with 24 points on 10-of-19 shooting while Brooklyn Wagler added 16, Kayla Horn 9 and Millie Shade 8. Wagler also had seven rebounds and four assists for the Blue Devils, who went with just seven active players. Outrebounded 42-33 by the taller Cardinals, the Blue Devils did force 22 Labette turnovers although guilty of 18 of their own. Just 5-of-26 from 3-point (.192), the Blue Devils shot 37.3 percent overall compared to .467 for Labette.
“Many of the areas we struggled today (shooting, rebounding, execution) are things we work on constantly,” McKinstry said. “When the opportunity presents itself, the bottom line is implementing what you’ve practiced and we seem to struggle with that aspect of the game.”
KCKCC athletes with 3.0 grade point averages or better will be honored at Academic Success Night during Wednesday’s doubleheader with JCCC. The game will also be the last home contest for sophomores Brooklyn Wagler, Brie Tauai, Millie Shade, Kayla Horn, Aeriel Holiday, Kylia Jarrett, Whitney Hazlett and student assistant Brooklyn Bockover.
With the end of the regular season coming to an end, games get bigger and bigger but none bigger than Kansas City Kansas Community College’s home contest with arch-rival Johnson County Wednesday night.
Knocked out of undisputed possession of the NJCAA Division II Region VI lead by a 69-52 loss at Labette Saturday, the Blue Devils will be the host of the Cavaliers at 7:30 p.m. in a showdown that has all kinds of playoff ramifications.
A Blue Devil win will assure KCKCC of no worse than a tie for the Region VI championship and a first-round playoff bye. Even better, a win and a Highland loss at Labette Wednesday would give KCKCC its first outright championship ever.
However, a loss would drop the Blue Devils (8-3) into a second place tie with JCCC (7-4) and possibly out of a first-round playoff bye, a seeding that will hinge on strengths of schedules of the two teams. The Blue Devils took a 76-75 decision in their first meeting with JCCC while one of Highland’s three losses came at home to Labette 76-74.
Athletes earning 3.0 grade point averages or better will be honored at Academic Success Night during Wednesday’s game, which will also be the last regular season finale for five KCKCC sophomores – Kellen Turner, Jon Murray, Mike Lee Jr., Donald Metoyer and Garrick McCuller II.
KCKCC never led against the Cardinals, who were spurred on by a Homecoming crowd. Limited to just seven field goals in 25 attempts (28.0 percent), the Blue Devils trailed 29-18 at halftime and were never close in the second half.
“We did not show up and play well and I am very disappointed,” KCKCC coach Kelley Newton said. “I will take full responsibility and make sure it doesn’t happen on Wednesday.”
Turner was the only Blue Devil in double figures, scoring 14 points, while Murray took another big step in wrapping up Region VI rebounding honors with a game high 14 rebounds. Murray also added nine points, Lee eight and Metoyer and Daniel Kingcannon six each.
Termed by the Parsons Sun “undoubtedly the marquee victory” for Jarrod Stanford in his second year as Labette head coach, the win avenged an earlier 64-57 loss to the Blue Devils and vaulted Labette (6-5) into fourth place in the region and a probable home playoff game.
“This win proves to our guys that when they put 40 minutes together and defend the way we ask them to, we can beat anybody,” Stanford said.
KCKCC’s biggest problem was 6-2 freshman guard Frank Royles. Playing for the first time in front of his mother who came in from Cincinnati, Royles scored 26 points on 11-of-18 shooting. The Cardinals shot at a 48.1 percent clip to .321 for KCKCC, led in rebounding 31-24 and had 12 turnovers to KCKCC’s 16.
A dream of Marvin Robinson, who is shown here in April 2015 at the Quindaro Overlook, is coming true with a step toward making the Quindaro Ruins a national landmark. The Quindaro Overlook is near 27th and Sewell in Kansas City, Kan., near the Missouri River. (File photo)
A national landmark designation will be sought for the Quindaro Ruins, having received approval Thursday night from the Unified Government Commission for the process.
The landmark project could lift the historic site into national attention, according to the proposed project manager.
The Quindaro Ruins are an abandoned pre-Civil War town site in Kansas City, Kan., west of the confluence of the Kansas and Missouri rivers.
Quindaro was a Kansas town founded by abolitionists on the Missouri River, across from Parkville, Mo., and the town was a stop on the Underground Railroad. Today the site is the largest archaeological Underground Railroad site in North America.
Townspeople left just before the start of the Civil War, and much of the town burned after Union troops quartered their horses there.
A view of the Quindaro Ruins in Kansas City, Kan., seen from the Quindaro Overlook at 27th and Sewell. (File photo)
The UG Commission unanimously agreed Thursday night to be the official applicant to the Kansas Historical Society for a grant to work on the project. The grant will fund work to apply for National Historic Landmark status with the National Parks Service. Freedom’s Frontier National Heritage Area, based in Lawrence, Kan., would be the project manager under the grant, according to UG officials.
Marlon Goff, UG interim director of economic development, told the commission Feb. 23 that UG staff members have been holding informational meetings with residents and business owners during the past year. The group is working toward national landmark status for the historic site.
Jim Ogle with Freedom’s Frontier, established in 2006 by federal legislation, said the organization serves 29 counties in Kansas, including Wyandotte, as well as 12 counties in Missouri. It is affiliated with the National Park Service, he said.
He said Marvin Robinson of Kansas City, Kan., has maintained the fire and enthusiasm for moving forward and remembering the Quindaro Ruins’ importance.
Julie McPike, managing director of Freedom’s Frontier, said work on this project started in August of 2015 with a River Trails Conservation meeting at the Quindaro Overlook. The recommendation was national historic landmark designation for the site. A meeting was held afterward at Allen Chapel AME Church about the designation for the church.
Elizabeth Hobson, in charge of education and interpretive grants for Freedom’s Frontier, said currently the Quindaro Ruins and Quindaro town site are listed on the National Register of Historic Places. A national historic landmark designation turns a landmark from local significance to national significance. The designation says the site is not only important to the region but also to the country in the nation’s history, she said.
“It’s going to bring more visibility for the region,” Hobson told the UG Commission. Only 2,500 properties are listed as national landmarks, while there is a much larger number of properties on the National Register of Historic Places.
Hobson said the application process is lengthy, and the first step was completed in late 2015. A letter was written to the Park Service stating they think this is a nationally significant landmark and asking if they could do it. She said the Park Service wrote back in January 2017, after consulting with the Kansas State Historic Preservation Office, community members, and the Wyandot Nation of Kansas, saying that the park service believes this is a valid step to go to, to become a national historic landmark.
“They did have a very clear outline for us going forward,” she said. The National Register nomination from 2002 is not the only story of the Quindaro Ruins; it needs to be broadened and widened, she said.
Besides bringing more visibility to the region, the landmark status could bring in increased opportunity for funding, different grants, tax incentives and more opportunities for technical assistance if listed as a landmark, she said.
If named a national landmark, the Quindaro Ruins could show up in park service magazines, and it could be found in lesson plans in the future, she said.
Finding stories about old Quindaro has been one of the goals of the group. Local history books have chapters about Quindaro, and the pre-Civil War newspaper, the Quindaro Chindowan, has been saved and is preserved at the state historical library. The group now is seeking more stories about Quindaro, including stories handed down in families. They also are looking for artifacts.
Freedom’s Frontier joined with the Kansas City, Kan., Public Library to begin an oral history project, Hobson said. The Main Library at 6th and Minnesota Avenue has resources to record oral histories about Quindaro. On a Saturday in February, there were nine interviews in this Quindaro oral history project at the library, she said. The interviews will be transcribed by volunteers and placed on the KCKPL website, she added.
A public symposium on the historic significance of Quindaro is planned in April 2018, she said, to share the research with the public.
According to Freedom’s Frontier, if they receive the $15,000 grant from the Kansas State Historical Preservation Fund, it will be used to hire a consultant for next year, to help complete the application to the Park Service.
Goff said there is a $15,000 match required from the UG, which he said could be in-kind services, including some of the work the UG already is working on, such as a master plan that covers part of the Ruins area.
Commissioner Gayle Townsend said the grant application on the Thursday night agenda dovetailed with the appearance of the Quindaro Development Corp. at the same meeting to ask for city services such as code enforcement, demolition and upkeep.
She said she hopes the Quindaro Ruins landmark project will help bring the residents in the area together. She also remembered the efforts of the late Jesse Hope, who was the director of the Old Quindaro Museum on 29th Street.
In the late 1980s, she said, the Quindaro Ruins was at risk of being a dump. The effort to turn it into a commercial dump was defeated, and now the Quindaro Ruins are taking another step forward as a historical site.
Commissioner Jane Philbrook also mentioned Jesse Hope’s museum that had operated for several years near the site.
Commissioner Hal Walker said a lot of people have joined in this effort, but only one individual, Marvin Robinson, kept this dream alive for the project.
Walker recalled that former Councilmember Chester Owens was on the council in the 1980s at the time when an effort was blocked to turn the Quindaro Ruins into a landfill. The waste company that wanted to bulldoze the Ruins was within weeks of destroying it when that effort was blocked. Walker said Robinson saw the area’s historical significance long before anyone else.
The John Brown statue at 27th and Sewell in the Quindaro area of Kansas City, Kan. (File photo)
To see a video of the UG meeting, visit https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SjXC3EG8W64.
To see the Kansas City, Kan., Public Library’s collection of stories about Quindaro, visit http://kckl.ent.sirsi.net/client/en_US/home/?rm=ARTICLES1%7C%7C%7C1%7C%7C%7C0%7C%7C%7Ctrue.
