‘Living the dream’ in small-town Kansas: Cunningham basks in 1st basketball state title
The sound of the horns is what Luke Albers will never forget.
It’s typically a tranquil scene on Saturday night on Main Street in Cunningham, but this past Saturday night it sounded like Times Square.
The Cunningham boys basketball team had won the Class 1A Division 2 championship, the first state title in program history, and town residents had lined their cars up and down Main Street to greet the return of their hometown heroes with a chorus of honks.
In true small-town Kansas fashion, the USD 332 yellow school bus transporting the team was escorted back to the high school by the town’s fire department.
Lights swirled and horns blared as the teenage boys poked their heads out of the windows to soak in the scene. This is the life, Albers thought.
“It’s a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity,” said Albers, who scored 73 points across three games in the state tournament. “It’s such an honor to be on the first team to win a state championship for Cunningham. It’s just so crazy to me.”
Every championship is special for a school’s community, but nothing quite compares to the impact high school sports can have on a small town in Kansas.
Located an hour west of Wichita on U.S. 54, in between Kingman and Pratt, the town of Cunningham (estimated population: 462) epitomizes the charm of a tight-knit community.
When the Wildcats played for a state championship in Great Bend this past weekend, Cozy’s Pizza, the in-town eatery, closed to make the drive to support the team.
“We have a great, little community here because everybody is always out to help everybody,” said Cozy’s owner Angela Murphy, a Cunningham graduate. “We see those kids grow up here eating pizza at Cozy’s and I think everyone kind of looks at those kids like they’re your own. To see them succeed like this, it makes you really proud like it’s one of your own kids out there winning a championship.”
No one appreciates the appeal of Cunningham more than the team’s coach, Bob Stackhouse, a Medicine Lodge native who accepted a job as a high school math teacher in 1990 and never left. He raised both of his sons with his wife, Mary, in the town and the family has called Cunningham home for more than three decades now.
During that time, Stackhouse has bounced around to coach just about every sport at every level in the school district. If the high school needed an assistant football coach, he volunteered. If the junior high needed a head girls track and field coach, he was up for the challenge.
In fact, Stackhouse took over the boys basketball coaching duties because that’s the opening the school needed filled.
“I’ve been living in this community for a long, long time and they’ve always treated me like one of their own,” Stackhouse said. “What I love about Cunningham is you don’t have all of the hustle and bustle that you do in larger towns. You don’t have to worry about your kids playing outside. Everybody is a family here and if somebody needs help, all you got to do is holler and you’ve got a line of people on your doorstep.”
Stackhouse has been a fixture at Cunningham for so long that he is coaching the sons of former players. Albers, a junior on the team, is the son of Nick Albers, a 1998 Cunningham graduate who played for Stackhouse during his time in high school.
“I still tell Luke that I think some of these plays they’re running are the same ones as back then,” Nick Albers said while laughing. “But hey, I guess if they still work, why change?”
Unlike many rural school districts, Cunningham’s enrollment has increased in recent years. That growth spearheaded a recent decision to pass a bond to renovate the high school building, which has been standing for more than 100 years, and even make additions.
The recent championship was cause for a town-wide celebration, not just of the team, but for a town on the rise. There’s a magnetic pull on the people in its community, making them want to return and have their children experience its wonder.
“We’re not some small town that’s fading away,” Stackhouse said. “We’re going to be here for a long time. People graduate, move back here and raise their kids here. It’s just a great place to live.”
Before this title run, Cunningham’s core group of players had experienced success as freshmen on the 2022 football team that won the inaugural 6-man championship in Kansas.
That resilience forged on Friday nights in the fall paid off in a big way on the basketball court in the spring, as Cunningham rallied for four straight comeback victories in its final four games of the season to claim a state championship.
After prevailing in overtime in the sub-state championship just to punch its ticket to state, Cunningham fell behind in the first quarter in all three of its state game — 17 to Bucklin, seven to Dighton and nine to Lebo. All three were one-possession games in the final minute with the Wildcats pulling out the victory each time.
“I don’t think anybody in that gym thought we were going to come back and win those games,” Luke Albers said. “We just have the mentality that we’re always in the game, as long as there’s time on the clock.”
Albers and fellow junior Will Wegerer, who averaged 25.3 points, combined to score 78% of the team’s points at the state tournament. But the duo is the first to give credit to their teammates like Luke McGuire for his passing or Dagim Reed for his defense. Nate Sterneker, Dylan Haiderson, Logan Kinsler, Kory Morgan and Kendall Rogers rounded out the rotation.
“It all starts with Luke and Will for us,” Stackhouse said. “They forced the others to believe that we could always have a chance as long as there’s time on the clock. They just took the bull by the horns. They deserve every accolade that’s coming to them because they are just outstanding players.”
Before these players entered high school, Cunningham had won just one state championship in school history — a 2008 boys track and field team title.
Now they have won the school’s first football and basketball titles, an achievement that Nick Albers has tried to impress upon his son.
“These boys are living the dream right now and they probably don’t even realize it,” the father said. “We’re just a small farming community, more or less, so to be able to win state in both is pretty neat. Some day they’re going to look back on what they did here and tell their kids about it.”
This story was originally published March 12, 2024 at 5:01 AM.
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