Bob Lutz: Older dads inspire Collegiate sons to basketball excellence

When I awoke Friday morning, there was a text on my phone. It was from Cameron Christian, a senior basketball player at Collegiate. He and his father, Chris, were part of a column I was writing, as was his Spartans teammate, Cody McNerney, and his father, Jim.

In the text, Cameron told me that his father died Thursday night after a long battle with cancer. He went on to write that he was going to play in Friday night’s Collegiate game at Mulvane to honor his dad, who was 66.

Chris Christian played for Jim McNerney at Southeast as a sophomore in 1965-66 before briefly playing at Wichita State. They often talked about being older fathers to high school sons. McNerney is 83 and Cody is a Collegiate sophomore.

“Chris was just a tremendous guy,” McNerney said. “I’ve gotten the opportunity to spend a lot of time with him during basketball season. He lives in the footsteps of Cameron. That’s what he really wanted to talk about.”

Cameron and Cody are two of the Spartans’ best players and basketball has been a part of their lives since they can remember. They have their fathers to thank.

“I learned the whole game from my dad, he taught me since I was in kindergarten,” Cameron Christian said during an interview before his father’s death. “Before every game we sit down and talk. He always tells me to make sure to focus on the game but also to have fun. He told me how high school was going to go by really fast, which it has.”

Cameron said his father had been fighting colon cancer for 14 years, and that witnessing that battle was inspiring to him.

“It makes me understand how life is too short and that you have to be as tough as you can be in every situation,” he said. “And my dad is a fighter.”

Chris Christian didn’t want to talk about his health when I talked to him this week. He wanted to talk about his son, by far the youngest of his four children.

“It’s just been great watching him play in high school,” Chris said this week. “He’s been a four-year starter and a good player. He jumps really well, so I can’t imagine who his father is. Plus, he’s a very good kid and a straight-A student. And that’s not being overly biased.”

In our short text exchange Friday, Cameron also mentioned how much his father was looking forward to this column on their relationship, and also about the relationship between Jim and Cody McNerney.

“Cody,” Chris Christian said this week, “is going to be a great player and he’s a very good player right now. He and Cameron have been around each other a lot and Cody is a stud.”

Cody, like Cameron, started to learn basketball at an early age. Jim McNerney was a guard on Ralph Miller’s University of Wichita teams from 1951-55.

“My dad taught me everything I know,” Cody McNerney said. “The age difference never even occurs to me, I never even think of it. He’s a big part of who I am and we both love sports so much. Him being a coach and me being a student, I just listen to him. We watch games every night on television and he talks to me about what happens, good and bad.”

Cameron averages 17.4 points for Collegiate; Cody 14.1.

“Basketball has always been a huge part of their lives,” Spartans coach Mitch Fiegel said. “When I was growing up, my uncle was a basketball coach. So I know how you talk about some other things at the dinner table for about a minute and then it goes to basketball and you never change the subject.”

Both players started attending Fiegel’s camps when they were young, and Fiegel recalls a conversation he had long ago with Chris Christian.

“He told me one time, ‘You know, I just got a feeling that this one is going to make it into being a player for you,’ ” Fiegel said. “And boy, he was right.”

Jim McNerney, a successful Pizza Hut franchisee and real-estate developer, said having Cody come along at 67 was a blessing in his life.

“I was living in Scottsdale (Ariz.) at the time with my wife and we were just having a great, great time,” he said. “(Having another child) wasn’t something we really thought about. But I was elated when it happened and, in a way, it sort of turned my life around.”

The McNerneys moved back to Wichita with a newborn in tow. They enrolled Cody at Collegiate when he was 4 and Jim has been the most involved of involved fathers.

“Every day,” he said. “I’m in the booster club there and everything revolves around Cody and Collegiate.

“Every morning I get up, I have something to live for that a lot of people don’t.”

Chris Christian felt the same way about Cameron. He told me this week that he was so looking forward to watching the rest of Cameron’s high school games, recognizing that the time to do so was running out.

Cameron scored 22 points in Collegiate’s 84-29 victory.

“He was getting some looks from schools for basketball but we’re not sure whether he’s going to continue playing or not,” Chris Christian said. “I personally hope he goes somewhere to college and just enjoys himself.”

Cameron said he loves playing basketball, but that his future revolves more around getting into finance, international business and law.

Just like his dad.

This story was originally published February 12, 2016 at 2:29 PM with the headline "Bob Lutz: Older dads inspire Collegiate sons to basketball excellence."