Forty years later, former bat boy has Mulvane baseball on brink of another title
Steve Nelson still remembers what it felt like to be included.
He was only a fifth-grader then, a Mulvane baseball bat boy tagging along for the greatest season in school history. His father was an assistant principal at the high school, which helped Nelson get close enough to the team to carry bats, memorize which one belonged to which player and live and die with every pitch of the 1986 season.
The players made him feel that way, too.
When Mulvane finished off a dominant Class 4-1A state championship run, outscoring three opponents by a combined 27-0, the Wildcats insisted Nelson join the team picture.
“All I ever wanted to be was a high school baseball player for Mulvane,” Nelson said. “That’s why it means the world to me to be the head coach here.”
Forty years later, Nelson’s own team is one win away from becoming the next Mulvane baseball group that kids in town grow up wanting to be.
The Wildcats reached the Class 4A state championship game Thursday with a 5-4 walk-off win over McPherson at Tointon Family Stadium on Kansas State’s campus, sending Mulvane to its first state final since that 1986 championship season.
It was Mulvane’s second straight walk-off win at the state tournament, following Brody Clasen’s game-winning RBI hit in a 1-0 quarterfinal win over Bishop Miege on Monday.
This time, the hero was Hagen Warkins.
With the bases loaded and two outs in the bottom of the seventh, Warkins drove a pitch back up the middle, off the mound and into center field, scoring the winning run and setting off a celebration that spilled deep into the outfield.
Mulvane improved to 27-1 and will play Topeka Hayden for the Class 4A state title at 1:30 p.m. Friday in Manhattan.
For most of Thursday afternoon, though, Mulvane looked like a team finally confronting the kind of adversity it had avoided for much of its dominant season.
McPherson, the only team to beat the Wildcats this year, built a 4-0 lead through four innings by forcing pressure on a wet, difficult day to defend. The Bullpups scratched together runs with bunts, choppers, aggressive baserunning and enough contact to make Mulvane pay for its mistakes.
Only one of McPherson’s four runs was earned. Mulvane committed errors, lost a scoring chance on the basepaths and looked out of sync in a way it rarely had all spring.
“Even when we were down 4-0,” Clubb said, “I don’t think anyone in that dugout had any doubt in our mind that we were going to come back and win that game.”
That is where the story of Thursday’s game started to feel connected to the larger story of the program Nelson has spent most of his life serving.
Mulvane had spent the season playing like the best team in 4A. But championship teams are not remembered only for how many opponents they overwhelm. They are remembered for what they do when the season starts leaning the wrong direction.
Down 4-0 to the only team that had already beaten them, the Wildcats did not fold.
“These kids have gigantic hearts,” Nelson said. “And they don’t quit.”
Parker Clubb gave Mulvane the time it needed. The Louisville commit entered in relief in the fourth inning and shut McPherson down the rest of the way, throwing 3 2/3 scoreless innings without allowing a hit. He walked one and struck out five, escaping the fourth with back-to-back strikeouts to keep the deficit manageable.
Mulvane finally broke through in the fifth when Clasen singled, moved to third on an error and scored on Grady Myers’ sacrifice fly.
Then came the sixth inning, when the Wildcats’ comeback arrived all at once.
Warkins singled with two outs, Reed Hackleman doubled and Clasen lined a two-run single up the middle to pull Mulvane within 4-3. When the throw home sailed away, Clasen kept running. Another errant throw allowed him to round third and score, turning a two-run single into a chaotic trip around the bases that tied the game.
“Sometimes you just kind of black out,” Nelson said. “All of a sudden I’m seeing Brody at third and the ball is in left field and somehow we just tied the game.”
In the top of the seventh, McPherson threatened again, but a liner found Grady Myers at second base. He fired to first for an inning-ending double play.
Mulvane still needed one more rally, and it came with two outs.
Manny Myers singled. Hays Ensley beat out an infield chopper. Clubb walked to load the bases. That brought up Warkins, who had started the game on the mound when Mulvane fell behind and felt personally responsible for helping his new team find a way back.
“I’m the new guy on the block, so I try to hold myself to a pretty high standard to play with these guys,” Warkins said. “I really just wanted to show the guys that I’m here for them as much as they are here for me.”
His walk-off swing did exactly that.
Warkins transferred from Campus before this season, moving from a Class 6A school into a smaller town where baseball feels less like an activity and more like a shared inheritance. He said Mulvane’s culture quickly felt different.
“The culture here in Mulvane is something special,” Warkins said. “It’s something that I’ve never seen. Coming from a big 6A school, everybody is kind of spread out. But coming to a 4A school in a small town, it is such a tight-knit community and they have welcomed me with open arms and really made me feel right at home.”
That community was easy to hear Thursday, as a large Mulvane crowd made the drive to Manhattan and stayed loud even after McPherson seized control early.
For Nelson and assistant coach Daniel Myears, that kind of support is part of what makes this run feel so personal.
Both are 1993 Mulvane graduates. They grew up together, played baseball together, stayed in Mulvane, became coaches and teachers in Mulvane and raised their families there. Nelson has been part of the baseball program for roughly two decades, starting as a junior varsity coach, moving to varsity assistant and serving as head coach for the last eight seasons. Myears was previously the head coach before football responsibilities led the two longtime friends to switch roles.
“I’m pretty sure I bleed green,” Myears said.
The 1986 team was the measuring stick for every Mulvane kid who came after it. It showed Nelson and Myears what the high school baseball program could mean to a town.
“We looked up to all of those guys from watching them play football, basketball and baseball,” Myears said. “I think we all idolized those guys growing up.”
That is why Thursday meant even more when David Katzenmeier, the coach of that 1986 championship team, made the trip to Manhattan to watch Mulvane play.
Katzenmeier, now 76, still lives in Wichita. Seeing Mulvane back on the same stage stirred something in him, too.
“It brought back a lot of memories,” Katzenmeier said.
The memories were not all as smooth as the championship line in the record book makes them look.
Mulvane’s 1986 team is remembered now for a dominant finish. The Wildcats won their final 22 games, outscored three state tournament opponents by a combined 27-0 and beat Rossville 8-0 in the championship game.
But that season actually began in disaster.
Mulvane opened 0-3 with a senior-heavy team that Katzenmeier believed should have been better. After the third loss, he took the team to left field. Katzenmeier was not known as a coach who yelled, belittled or tried to intimidate players, but he challenged his seniors that day. If they did not want to play the game with energy, he told them, he had underclassmen who would.
The Wildcats never lost again.
That story made Katzenmeier smile Thursday because it sounded so much like what Nelson’s team had just done against McPherson. Mulvane had been knocked off course. It had made mistakes. It had every reason to tighten up.
Instead, the Wildcats answered.
Katzenmeier said that is part of what made it meaningful to see Nelson and Myears leading the program now.
“It makes my heart hurt in a good way,” Katzenmeier said. “I wouldn’t want anybody else to take over the program. Those two were both two really good kids.”
Katzenmeier knew Nelson long before Nelson became a coach.
He remembered the fifth-grade bat boy who wanted to be around the team so badly. He also remembered trying to keep him safe in a dugout full of high school players swinging bats.
“Steve wasn’t a very big kid, so I just remember I didn’t want him to get hurt,” Katzenmeier said. “You’ve got high school guys swinging bats, so I told Steve to stay behind me in the dugout.”
Later, when Nelson was in school, Katzenmeier taught middle-school physical education and Nelson became his teacher’s aide. The two remember shooting hoops together in the gym. Katzenmeier still likes to tease Nelson about it.
“Steve never beat me in H-O-R-S-E,” Katzenmeier said. “Maybe he got one win when he was a senior, but that was it.”
Nelson and Myears both remember Katzenmeier as one of the people who helped shape how they wanted to coach. He was competitive, but steady. He did not rely on anger or intimidation. He treated players with respect, showed them love and still found a way to pull the best out of them.
“He taught me the right way to treat kids,” Nelson said.
That meant something to the former coach.
“That makes me feel great,” Katzenmeier said. “Every coach wants to hear that.”
Nelson said seeing Katzenmeier in the stands after the game was something he will remember no matter what happens Friday.
“It’s been on the back on my mind,” Nelson said of the 40-year anniversary of Mulvane’s last baseball championship.
So has the full-circle nature of this moment.
Nelson was once the kid looking up to the Mulvane players who made him feel included. Now he is the coach trying to give Grey Sanders, Clubb, Warkins, Clasen, Grady Myers, Ensley, Manny Myers, Hackleman, Hudson Myers and the rest of this team the kind of experience that can last a lifetime.
Clubb said the players understand how deeply their coaches care.
“Everybody in Mulvane is just so close-knit,” Clubb said. “We’ve all played with each other since we were kids. Everybody supports everybody here. We know it’s pretty special here.”
After the game, with Mulvane back in the state championship game for the first time since the team that made him fall in love with the program, Nelson struggled to explain what it meant to him.
“I don’t know if I can even answer right now without getting emotional,” Nelson said. “I’ve been a part of this program in some way, shape or form since I was in fifth grade. I don’t know if I can express just how much this means to me.”
Then he thought again about those 1986 players who let a fifth-grade bat boy stand with them.
“My dad was assistant principal, so maybe they thought they had to be nice to me,” Nelson joked. “But they really did take me under their wing. They didn’t have to do that for some fifth-grade punk, but they treated me like I was one of them.”
Forty years ago, that Mulvane team became the group every kid in town wanted to grow up and become.
On Friday, Nelson’s team gets its chance to become the next one.
This story was originally published May 28, 2026 at 5:35 PM.
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