From Hutch to Hesston to Oklahoma Christian hoops, with a side of high-level racing

It takes an unusual combination of skills, focus and determination to excel in two sports while in college. Perhaps that helps explain why multi-sport college athletes are so few and far between.

Connor Atkinson, a product of Hutchinson High who’s about to graduate from Division II Oklahoma Christian, is one of those few. She’s just finished up her NCAA eligibility as a forward on the university’s basketball team after standout runs at Hutchinson and Hesston College.

Her second sport?

Auto racing.

That’s right: Atkinson, 22, spends some of her time away from the court behind the wheel of a race car.

“There’s just a whole different adrenaline rush compared to basketball,” she said. “When I was young, I’d be in the car and in the lineup and I’d look at how many (cars) were out there … and I’d tell my dad, ‘I’m scared.’

“But as soon as I’m out there (on the track), that feeling is gone. You don’t think about it. You don’t feel any of it. … I’ll get out of the car, even after a good race, and I’ll be shaking because I have so much adrenaline.”

Before she knocked down her first three-pointer in an organized basketball game, Atkinson was winning go-kart races in Kansas. As a high schooler, she raced micro-midget sprint cars across the Midwest.

With her collegiate basketball career now complete, Atkinson plans to focus her energies on seeing how far auto racing can take her.

Stephanie Findley has seen a lot in her 35 seasons as Oklahoma Christian’s basketball coach, but never before had she come across someone with Atkinson’s unique athletic combination.

“We’ve had kids that are into horses or livestock … but not had any into the race car action,” Findley said. “But I like that. It’s cool and it’s different.”

Start your engines

From the time Atkinson was 3, her dad, Brad, would often take her to the local track in Hutchinson to watch his friends race on Friday nights.

He thought about trying to buy a car and drive it himself, but decided he’d rather spend the money on his four daughters. So he bought a used go-kart, fixed up the frame and added a motor.

Connor, the oldest girl, was 7 the first time she ran a practice session in that go-kart. It didn’t go very well — she locked up with another car and flipped. She wasn’t hurt, but she was embarrassed and wanted to head home after the accident.

Soon enough, though, she’d mastered driving the go-kart and quickly advanced to what’s known as a cage car. In her first year of driving, she won 28 “A feature” races, and the next year, at just 8 years of age, she drove the cage car, the go-kart and a micro-midget car (even though she didn’t meet the age requirement for the latter vehicle).

Racing at a track in Park City, she finished runner-up in the micro-midget junior division that year to a 16-year-old girl. By age 10, she was racing only micro midgets, competing in the Jayhusker Racing Series on dirt tracks in Kansas and Nebraska and at I-44 Speedway in Oklahoma City. The next year, after a wreck, Dad moved Daughter into a winged sprint car capable of topping 110 mph.

But the story doesn’t stop there. She practiced driving the sprint car for a year before racing it. Just 13 at the time, she didn’t meet the minimum age requirement for sprint cars, either ... but she was so successful in her practice sessions that the founder of the United Rebel Sprint Series, Rick Salem of Oberlin, waived the rule and let her compete.

“She was just a youngster, a little bitty girl,” Salem said. “I was a little concerned to see if she could handle it. But she’s got some skills. I told her to just tell me she was 14 and to come race. She is a natural. She’s good at it.”

Bigger and faster

Soon Atkinson would be crowned the United Rebel Sprint Series’ national and Kansas rookie of the year.

Another season, another step up.

“The ‘bad’ thing for Connor is she’s an extremely good driver, and every time she got good, we moved her up,” her father said. “Every time she’d start winning consistently, we were moving her up and pushing her. When you get to that big sprint car level, it’s hard. The level of competition is so high, even in the micros... She’s darn good at it, but she was really good at it for her age, weight and horsepower.”

As the years went by, Atkinson kept racing on dirt tracks throughout Kansas, Nebraska, Oklahoma, Minnesota, South Dakota and Colorado. And she knew her second sport wasn’t like most others’.

“It’s just different for people, because they aren’t around that type of (racing) atmosphere, so they don’t know the lengths of it,” Atkinson said. “It’s hard to explain it if they’ve never been around it. They just imagine a little tiny go-kart … and the sprint cars are definitely not tiny go-karts. Once people see it, they realize it’s a lot different than they expected.”

Meanwhile, on the court ...

All the while, as her racing skills advanced, Atkinson kept playing basketball, too.

She made her junior-high varsity team in eighth grade and was playing for Hutchinson High’s varsity by her sophomore year. In her senior season, she was a starter and fared well enough to land a scholarship at Hesston College.

After setting Hesston’s single-season and career three-point records, she progressed to Oklahoma Christian, where she became a key role player — appearing in 24 games, starting three, and averaging 2.8 points per game in her final season.

“I loved it,” Atkinson said of her journey on the hardwood. “It all kind of worked out.”

“She is a smart player,” said Findley, the coach at Oklahoma Christian. “She thinks the game. ... She’s been a very good sixth man for us. She has accepted that role with maturity and knows that it’s important that she be ready to play at any given minute.”

The future awaits

Racing took a bit of a back seat for Atkinson in college, but now she’s hoping to rekindle her need for speed.

She’ll graduate this month with a business degree and minor in accounting and already works for Oklahoma City-based Paycom, an online payroll and human-resources technology provider.

Once the coronavirus shutdowns ease and auto racing can resume, Atkinson plans to get back to competing at Midwestern tracks and I-44 Speedway.

Her next goal: racing on the top-level World of Outlaws sprint-car circuit, the most prestigious series in dirt-track racing. And who knows ... with how quickly she’s ascended the ranks of motorsports, a future in NASCAR, Formula 1 or Indy Racing isn’t out of the question.

No matter how far she progresses, she’s already made her father very proud. How many dads can say that their daughter was a two-sport athlete in college, and that one of those sports was auto racing?

“She’s just an awesome kid,” Brad Atkinson said. “When this all started, we never thought we’d take it as far as we have, but it’s been a great thing.”

This story was originally published April 8, 2020 at 4:14 PM.