‘He’s a gym rat’: Kapaun’s Henry Thengvall to join the Wichita State basketball team
The Wichita State men’s basketball team is adding some more local flavor for the upcoming season.
Wichita native Henry Thengvall, a 6-foot-6 senior at Kapaun Mt. Carmel, announced on his social media Tuesday that he is committed to joining the Shockers. He told The Eagle he will join the program as a preferred walk-on.
Thengvall is the third Wichita native who is currently committed for next year’s WSU roster, joining recently committed Xavier Bell, a former Andover Central standout who is transferring in from Drexel, and fellow walk-on Steele Gaston-Chapman, a former Campus standout.
For a life-long Shocker fan, wearing the Wichita State jersey will mean a little more to him.
“I’ve been dreaming about this since I was watching them as a little kid,” Thengvall said. “It’s going to be so awesome. The chance to stay home close to my family and be apart of this team and play D1 basketball, it was a pretty obvious choice to me. There was no way I could turn it down.”
Thengvall is fresh off a breakout season at Kapaun, where he averaged 20.2 points and 5.4 rebounds while shooting 44% from the floor and 86% from the foul line. He was the most dynamic player on a team that won an undefeated City League championship, finished with a 21-2 record and earned the No. 1 seed at the Class 5A state tournament.
He also recently earned all-class, all-state honors from The Eagle, giving him the distinction as one of the five best players in Kansas high school basketball this past season.
“He’s a gym rat,” Kapaun coach Steve Eck said. “We wouldn’t have been undefeated in the league if it wasn’t for him. He helped us in some key games. He usually saved his best for the best games.”
Being a gym rat who will bring energy every day to practice is exactly what head coach Isaac Brown is looking for in a walk-on for his program. Thengvall, who was attracting Division II interest, fits the bill, can offer WSU a shooter in a 6-6 frame who will never slack in effort and bring intensity to the defensive end.
He wants to be a valuable member of the scout team to help starters and the rest of his WSU teammates improve in practice when he joins the team for workouts in June.
“I think I owe it to myself and to everyone who’s supported me to work as hard as I can every single day and help the team,” Thengvall said. “I want to play hard every single play. It’s going to be a huge honor to play at Wichita State and I can’t wait to see what we can accomplish.”
Adding depth to the roster was important to Brown after carrying just 13 players, including two redshirts and a walk-on, this past season.
The Shockers currently have commitments from returners in senior point guard Craig Porter, sophomore center Kenny Pohto and both redshirt freshmen, Jalen Ricks and Isaac Abidde. Sophomore star Ricky Council IV is also potentially coming back from the NBA Draft. Bell is currently the lone scholarship player in WSU’s 2022 recruiting class, which will feature at least eight scholarships available.
“He can shoot it, he can drive it a little bit, he’s got some size and he got a lot tougher this year,” Eck said. “I think he can help them do some things and that’s why he’s going there. I’ve known coach Brown for a long time and he’s a great guy and I told Henry this would be a good situation.”
Thengvall was a three-sport athlete at Kapaun, where he also played football in the fall and is currently one of the state’s top middle distance runners on the track and field team. He finished third place in the 800-meter run at the Class 5A state track meet last spring.
In fact, he told The Eagle that he was planning on accepting a scholarship offer to run track at Creighton before Brown extended the offer as a preferred walk-on this week.
”I had a couple opportunities to run track, but basketball is my first love,” Thengvall said. “I’ve been holding out to see if the right fit in basketball came around. Wichita State has such great history and is a great program, so I couldn’t turn it down. No way.”
This story was originally published April 12, 2022 at 4:18 PM.
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