[wpbvideo id=’303076′]Even as you reach the city limits of Walnut Grove, you can see the small town’s pride in their basketball. The girls four state championships are mentioned on the city limits sign.
And as you arrive at the gym, you see the parking lot is already filling up a full hour before the first game. Not that there’s a lot else to do.
“Dollar General, that’s about it,” says Logan Thomazin, a member of the boys basketball team. “Or the one gas station we have. I guess you have to go to Willard or Springfield to do anything.”
Logan Thomazin has been spending his time becoming the all-time leading scorer in the history of the boys program, getting the game ball from the previous record-holder, Tim McPhail, who scored 1,733 points 40-years ago. Thomazin is a junior, with over a year left to add to his place in history. And the 6-2 guard who averages 24 points and makes 40% of his treys is on pace to become one of the state’s top 20 leading scorers of all-time.
But his college basketball career is not guaranteed because he’s also a two-time all-state baseball player. Hitting 462 and holding a 1.29 ERA as a pitcher.
“Could try to both if I’m able to that,” Thomazin explains. “A few smaller colleges want me to do that.”
“You know to be that talented and successful you have to have that kind of attitude,” added boys head coach Darin Meinders. “The attitude that you want to compete and win every time you take the floor or the field.”
Which is why there’s one goal Thomazin is sure about. After going 0 for 16 in last year’s Class 1 state championship loss to Stanberry, he’s adamant about getting his state runner-up Tigers back to Columbia and getting some redemption.
“We had one bad game,” he remembers. “And that will probably never happen again.”
“Seeing him come off the floor and apologize to me was tough,” Meinders recalled. “We use that as motivation and we talk about getting back and finishing what we started.”
Bayley Harman shares that same sentiment. As a freshman two years ago, she made two free throws to secure a 48-45 win over Naylor to give Walnut Grove its third-consecutive state title. Ironically, her sister Heather did the same thing at the free throw line two-years earlier.
“When Heather stepped to the line there wasn’t a doubt in my mind,” her father Russ said.
“Before that, he asked me what I thought,” added her mother Dawn. “And I said, ‘we’re gonna win’.”
But last year, the Walnut Grove girls finished third at state. And Bayley, who’s already reached 1,500 career points as a junior, did not take it well.
“I hated that game,” Bayley recalled. “But we won’t settle for anything less than playing in the championship game.”
That’s become an expectation in part because over the years three separate but related Harman families in Walnut Grove have sent valuable players to the girls program. Russ and Dawn Harman have sent Bayley, as well as Heather, who’s now at Drury, and Hannah, who played at College of the Ozarks.
“Heather wanted to be better than Hannah and Bayley wants to be better than Heather and Hannah,” their mom explains.
“Even though I get angry with them more than half the time they are making me better each time,” Bayley said.
“Bayley’s sisters and her cousins and all of ‘em have just been role models for our program,” girls head coach Rory Henry said. “They’re great kids and they come from a great family.”
