‘You couldn’t stop him’: Before TBT success, Conner Frankamp dazzled the City League
The rest of the country may have been introduced to the clutch shooting of Conner Frankamp last week, but basketball coaches from around the City League have known about it for more than a decade now.
Eight years have passed since Frankamp scored the final basket of his City League all-time record 2,295 points while playing for North from 2009-13, but his presence in Wichita has only grown since then.
He finished out a successful collegiate career for his hometown Shockers, then has thrived as a professional basketball player, already reaching the pinnacle of international basketball, the EuroLeague, by the age of 26 when he inked a deal with elite Russian club Zenit Saint-Petersburg this summer.
And Frankamp’s popularity in Wichita reached a new all-time high last week when he scored back-to-back game-winners to cap improbable comebacks for the AfterShocks to send the Wichita State alumni team to The Basketball Tournament quarterfinals, where they will play Florida TNT in an 11 a.m. Saturday game broadcast on ESPN from the University of Dayton.
Watching Frankamp score so freely in the TBT took many back to his high school days, which is why The Eagle spoke with three prominent City League coaches during Frankamp’s era — North’s Gary Squires, Heights’ Joe Auer and East’s Ron Allen — to see what they had to say about watching Frankamp still torch nets in Wichita all these years later.
‘I’ve never seen that kind of electricity before’
The Conner Frankamp and Perry Ellis era of the City League, which intertwined from 2008 to 2013, brought back a sense of excitement in the city not seen since the late 70s and early 80s.
Frankamp was a scoring machine who had to be seen to be believed. Ellis wasn’t quite the showmen as his counterpart at North, but he was the ultimate winner, leading his Heights teams to four straight state championships.
Whenever the two squared off against each other, it was as if Wichita had been transported back to the golden generation of City League basketball.
“Those games were unlike anything that I’ve ever been a part of,” Heights coach Joe Auer said. “If you weren’t in the gym by halftime of the girls game, you weren’t getting in. In my entire career, I’ve never seen that kind of electricity before. I had a lot of old-timers tell me it was like the Antoine Carr, Aubrey Sherrod, Greg Dreiling era. It brought back memories for those folks of those days. For me, I’ll always treasure what went on from 2009-13. That has to go down as one of the greatest eras in the history of the City League and I’m so blessed to have had a great front-row seat to watch both of those kids play.”
Auer is well-versed in the history of the City League and who the all-time greats are: Ricky Ross, Darnell Valentine, Carr, Dreiling and Sherrod. While he will still make the case for his guy, Ellis, to be at the top of the list, Auer would also make a case for Frankamp as the best shooter in the league’s history.
“I’m about to go into my 26th season and I’ve never seen a kid shoot the ball like Conner,” Auer said. “He was just fearless. I’ve never coached against a kid that’s been more confident or more prepared to make shots. The thing was that you knew Conner was going to try to score 50 every night and you still couldn’t stop him. You just couldn’t. We tried everything. But he has the quickest, most beautiful jump shot I’ve ever seen.”
During Heights’ four-year reign atop Class 6A, the Falcons were considered the top defensive team in the state. For the 2011-12 season, they had multiple lockdown perimeter defenders with a senior Ellis protecting the rim in the paint. But even their top-ranked defense was humbled by Frankamp in their final game in their old gym, which was also the last game of the regular season.
Frankamp delivered one of the best performances of his career, scoring 38 points to nearly defeat top-ranked Heights by himself in a 47-38 stunner.
“I’ve said this to our kids for years now and I truly believe this: we don’t win our fourth straight state title if Conner doesn’t come into our gym and light us up like he did,” Auer said. “We had that state record 62-game winning streak that just ended and then he comes in and just destroys us. Humiliates us. We couldn’t stop him. But then two weeks later, we win our fourth straight state title. I think that game and what Conner single-handedly did to us re-lit that fire for our team.”
But that wasn’t the last memorable Frankamp game that Auer would have to sit through.
Just a year later, when Frankamp was a senior, he returned to Heights’ gym and once again walked away with an improbable victory. Heights was in control of the game for nearly the whole way until Frankamp caught fire late and forced overtime.
“Overtime was about to start and he looks over at me and says, ‘You know what’s ready to happen, coach,’ and I couldn’t say it to him, but I knew what was ready to happen,” Auer said.
Frankamp put the finishing touches on a 69-66 overtime win for North by scoring a game-high 37 points.
It was a feeling that Auer suspects some TBT coaches felt after Frankamp was done torching them during the Elam Ending.
“What a treat for Wichita and this community to see what this young man has been doing during the TBT,” Auer said. “Conner is one of the greatest basketball players not just in the history of Wichita, but in the history of Kansas. I’m really happy for him because of how hard he worked. I know him and his dad put in countless hours in the gym. He’s an inspiration to all of our kids in our community. It’s not like he’s super tall and can jump out of the gym with a huge wingspan. He’s a grinder and a hard worker and he’s worked as hard as anybody in the history of our league to perfect his craft.”
‘He does not disappoint’
When Frankamp was in high school, North basketball games — home or away — were the hottest ticket in town every Tuesday and Friday night in the winter.
In his decades of coaching in the City League, former East coach Ron Allen has never seen anything quite like the electricity in a gymnasium when Frankamp was playing.
“There’s been a lot of great, great players in the City League, but I think Conner was probably the most popular of any of them to come through the city,” Allen said. “Everybody knew his name. They knew what he could do. And he didn’t disappoint. That’s the one thing you can say about Conner, he does not disappoint when you see him play. And if you got lucky, maybe he would have one of those games where he really put on a show. I’m sad to say I had to witness one those games myself.”
That game came in Allen’s final season at East in 2012 when Frankamp was a junior at North and exploded for 47 points, including nine three-pointers, in a 69-66 upset victory for North.
“We knew Conner was a great shooter, but we always felt like we could trap him and send two players at him and force somebody else to beat us,” Allen said. “But when he got it going, he was about as good as any kid I’ve ever coached against. And he got it going that night at North and just went completely off on us. When he gets his confidence going like that, it’s extremely hard to stop.”
One of the traits that Allen admired most in Frankamp’s game was his resiliency. On the rare occasion he missed two or three shots in a row, Frankamp’s on-court demeanor never altered.
“That’s the thing I always liked about him was that he always looked like he believed the next shot was going in,” Allen said. “That’s why we always told our kids, ‘You can’t ever relax on him. You can’t take a deep breath. You have to stay right with him every step.’ Give him a lot of credit, he made North High a competitive basketball team.”
And in turn, Frankamp’s greatness pushed the other top teams in the City League, like East, to become even better.
“Our kids always enjoyed competing against Conner,” Allen said. “Those weeks of practice were always exciting because it’s easy to motivate the kids. Everybody was focused. I used to build (Frankamp) up as a coach and tell our kids, ‘If you don’t come to play, this kid is going to run you out the gym.’ Practices were always great and the games were always great. I do think we brought out the best in each other and it made the league better as a whole.”
In the years since, Allen has been able to work some with Frankamp’s father, Marty, and gotten to know Conner a little better. The experience has made Allen, who remains in Wichita in his retirement, an even bigger fan of what Frankamp is doing currently.
“I have nothing but respect and admiration for Conner,” Allen said. “I like him even more as a person than as a basketball player and that’s saying something. What he’s doing just makes us all proud of the City League. As a coach who competed against him, it makes you proud that you were able to play against a kid like that. I feel like any time a kid from the City League is successful, then we’re all successful. We challenge each other and we push each other, so I’m as happy for his success as if I was his coach.”
‘We felt like we were Showtime’
To be the high school coach of Conner Frankamp was a joy, but also a job that came with pressure for Gary Squires.
He knew Frankamp was a prodigy as soon as he arrived at North. Squires felt like it was his job to help guide him to his destiny of stardom.
“There were always a little bit of nerves because I felt like I was responsible for the kid,” Squires said. “But man, those were some special years. So special. I couldn’t wait for Tuesday and Friday nights. I was giddy all day at school because I couldn’t wait to see what Conner would do next. I was living the dream, as you would say.”
With Frankamp on its side, North felt like it could beat any team on any given night. He averaged 27.2 points as a sophomore, then exploded for 32.3 points per game as a junior and followed that up with a 31.1 scoring average while leading North to a City League title and state tournament berth.
“In our own way, we felt like we were Showtime,” Squires said. “We got to the point in Conner’s senior year where we felt like the kids had so much confidence that we were going to win, it was just a matter of how many. We just had that mentality and it started with Conner. We knew in big games he was always going to step up.”
Squires had so much confidence in Frankamp because he saw first-hand his work ethic outside of games.
The coach said it was mesmerizing watching Frankamp go through a shooting workout with his father, Marty, after a practice. He would stay after the two-hour practice until he made 100 three-pointers without fail.
In practice, Squires would try to put Frankamp at a disadvantage by teaming him with junior-varsity players pitted against the other varsity starters in 5-on-5 scrimmages. No matter the odds, Frankamp seemed to elevate his game to whatever the situation called for. Whether it was a suicide sprint or an intrasquad scrimmage, he wanted to win.
“He was our best player, but he was also our hardest worker,” Squires said. “In all my years coaching, I’ve never had someone work harder than Conner.”
While Frankamp has been on top of the basketball world for so long in Wichita, it has come with a considerable amount of pressure that goes unrealized by many fans. Almost every game he played in high school was sold out with expectations of him putting on a scoring show. Anything less than 30 points was considered a disappointment.
Frankamp has been carrying around so much pressure on his shoulders for so long, Squires has been in admiration of how he has handled it throughout his career with the spotlight shining so bright on him at such an early age.
That’s why Squires was tearing up from his seat in Koch Arena last Tuesday when Frankamp nailed the game-winning three in front of a home audience. This was the Frankamp that Wichita loved watching play and this was the moment Frankamp deserved.
“As soon as it got kicked out to him, I knew the game was over,” Squires said. “I got chills watching him run around and celebrate like that. I’ve never seen him do that before. I’m so happy for him and I thought to myself, ‘He deserves this so much.’ He’s had so much pressure on him his whole life and for him to have a moment like that, you couldn’t script it any better.”
This story was originally published July 29, 2021 at 6:00 AM.
.jpg)