From blowout losses to Peach Jam: Wichita youth basketball team makes history
The first version of this Kansas Select boys basketball team did not look like a future Peach Jam qualifier.
The core players were once the kids taking lopsided losses at MAYB Nationals. Three summers ago, they lost every game at nationals by around 35 points. Two summers ago, they made progress, but still left Wichita after a quarterfinal loss and two more blowout consolation defeats.
Now that same Wichita-based group is headed to one of the most exclusive youth basketball stages in the country.
Kansas Select 2030 Red, a boys basketball team made up of eighth-graders entering their freshman year of high school, is believed to be the first team from Wichita — junior circuit or high school — to qualify for any Peach Jam event.
“It was going to take a special group of kids to do something like this,” Kansas Select founder and coach Jared Mocaby said. “I think they’re starting to understand what they have done isn’t something normal. It’s just really cool to see all of their hard work pay off.”
Kansas Select earned its place by going 4-0 at a Jr. EYBL Open qualifier in Kansas City in late May, winning every game by at least 25 points and beating elite regional competition by an average of 34 points. That dominant run secured the Southwest region’s spot in the Nike Jr. EYBL Championship at Peach Jam, which will be held July 8-12 in North Augusta, S.C.
The 64-team eighth-grade field will be split into 16 pods of four teams for pool play. It is a conservative estimate, Mocaby said, that more than half of the top 150 players in the class of 2030 will be represented at the event.
For Kansas Select, the trip means more than another tournament.
It is a measuring stick for a team that has grown from local growing pains into a 19-1 summer. It is a credibility moment for a grassroots program that Mocaby started in 2022 with one team. And it is a rare chance for a group of Wichita-area players to test its brand of basketball against some of the best eighth-graders in the country.
“I’m excited to see our kids get the chance to go compete against the best,” Mocaby said. “And just the experience that they’re going to get, it’s just really cool for me to see.”
Mocaby knows what the moment means because he has been there for the climb.
A Goddard graduate, Mocaby played at Bethel, then returned to the program as an assistant coach after graduating in 2023. He was recently hired as Valley Center’s new boys basketball coach, a job that now gives him a high school program to lead while he continues trying to build Kansas Select into a stronger name in the Wichita basketball scene.
When he launched Kansas Select four years ago, the idea was not to immediately chase national stages. It was to build something sustainable, challenge local players and give Wichita-area kids a chance to develop together.
This 2030 team has become the best example yet of that vision.
Six of the nine players on the roster have been with Kansas Select for the past three summers. Mocaby remembers coaching some of them when they were fifth-graders and the team was nowhere close to this level. The program has slowly added better talent, raised its standards and watched the group become more connected each summer.
The addition of William Buckner of Kapaun Mt. Carmel this year helped push the team from good to elite. There were growing pains early, as players learned how to fit together and Kansas Select suffered its only loss of the summer during that adjustment period.
Since then, the team has been rolling over the competition.
That is not because Kansas Select plays like a typical summer basketball team built around one or two players taking turns hunting highlights. Its identity is different.
The ball moves. Roles are accepted. The best players defend, pass and run. Everybody on the roster has a purpose and the team has rarely had to fight the tension that can pull apart talented youth teams when individual attention becomes more important than winning.
“All of the kids are just naturally unselfish,” Mocaby said. “All they care about is winning and getting better. It’s a huge help when your best players buy into it. They’re OK not chasing the love all of the time because they know if we do great things as a team, then everybody on the team is going to get that love.”
That might be Kansas Select’s most interesting trait entering Peach Jam.
The roster has star power. Buckner, Bishop Carroll’s Bret Littlejohn, Northwest’s Brian Johnson Jr. and Maize South’s Cruz Warner are already considered among the best players in Kansas in their class.
But the team works because everyone knows and excels in their role, as help also comes from Pres Abel (Circle), Chase Newton (Valley Center), Mason Rush (Douglass), Sam Kappelmann (Kapaun Mt. Carmel) and Griffin Crawford (Hutchinson Trinity).
Kansas Select is not built to overwhelm the best teams in the country with sheer athleticism. It is built to make the simple play again and again. Mocaby believes the team’s biggest strength is its togetherness — the extra pass, the willingness to screen, the trust that the ball will come back and the understanding that a good shot for one player is good for everyone.
In an event like Peach Jam, that can be rare.
The tournament is one of the largest recruiting stages in youth basketball. Players arrive knowing national evaluators, college coaches and shoe-circuit observers are watching. Even at the eighth-grade level, reputations can start forming quickly.
That environment can reward big scoring games, viral plays and individual flashes. Kansas Select is hoping its team-first approach will stand out in a different way.
“What makes this team really special is we probably have some of the best players in Kansas and they all play together,” Mocaby said. “Sometimes summer can be about individual stuff, but they are OK diverting that trend to become better as a team. That’s just who they are. They all want to win and they all play crazy hard.”
Mocaby said the players deserve credit for buying into that approach, but he also points to their parents.
Before Kansas Select could become a team that shared the ball, defended and accepted roles, the groundwork had to be laid somewhere. Mocaby believes the parents helped shape a group of players who were already willing to think beyond themselves.
That has made coaching this roster different. Mocaby has not had to constantly convince his best players to care about winning. He has not had to fight the selfishness that can come with talent. Instead, he has been able to push the team toward a higher standard because the players have already accepted the most important piece.
They want to win together.
Some players will score more. Some will defend more. Some will handle the ball. Some will bring energy in smaller windows. Mocaby said the team’s success comes from everyone understanding that every role matters.
That is how a team can go from MAYB blowouts to Peach Jam in three summers.
At first, Mocaby was not sure his players understood how significant the accomplishment was. They had won another tournament and earned another title. To them, it felt like the next step in a summer that had already been full of wins.
Then the reaction started building.
The social media posts. The congratulations. The people around Wichita basketball pointing out that this had not happened before.
That is when the magnitude began to settle in.
The stage waiting in the South will be unlike anything this group has seen. Kansas Select will play three pool-play games against national competition filled with size, speed, skill and future high-major prospects. The team will be tested in ways it has not been tested this summer.
That is exactly why Mocaby wants them there.
A group that once had to learn how to compete now gets to see how far it has come. A Wichita program that started with one team now gets to carry its name into the Nike spotlight. A roster built on patience, trust and unselfishness now gets to find out if that brand of basketball can travel against the best.
For Kansas Select, qualifying for Peach Jam already made history.
Now comes the chance to prove this team belongs there.
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