Ten years ago next month, a 6th grader from Eureka literally carried his basketball team to the Woodson Masonic Lodge #121 4th-5th-6th Grade Basketball Championship at nearby Toronto, Kan.
9/11 was still seven months away, but Tyrel Reed assaulted the record books of this tournament that has taken place for area boys teams since 1984. Records that I'm sure will never be broken again.
A few years ago before kids in our household, I assembled some of the Lodge tournament scorebooks and compiled some individual stats. It is mind-boggling to fathom what Tyrel accomplished as a 5th and 6th grader. These are just a few of the records he still holds:
1) single-season scoring leader (67 points). Second place is 41;
2) most field goals made in 3-game tourney (23);
3) single-game scoring leader (25);
4) most 3-pointers in tournament (8) and game (3);
5) most field goals in game (9).
And if that's not enough, how about an 87-percent free throw shooter in a tourney (13-for-15).
"One of the main things that I remember is how we had such a hard time getting enough kids in his class to play," said Tyrel's biggest fan, his Dad, Stacy. "So we recruited some younger kids such as the Hayes boy who I think was in 4th grade to play."
Eureka, which won the title that year, scored 82 points as a team in the three games. Tyrel poured in 67 of them. In Eureka's first game that tourney, Tyrel bucketed 24 of his team's 26 points.
"Probably my fondest memory is how Ty wanted everyone on the team to touch the ball and at least put up a shot attempt during the games," said Stacy, who at the time was the coach at Eureka High. "Along with that I do remember how proud those kids were when they won the tournament."
"In the more than 25 years that we have held the Masonic Basketball Tournament, we have had a number of very good young athletes who went on to have extremely good high school and college careers," Tournament organizer Jeff Sowder, a Past Grand Master of Kansas Masons, said. "Tyrel was by far the best of them all."
"Ty was a kid that was highly competitive, but loved to make his buddies happy," Stacy said. "From the standpoint of these were his classmates and he was around them every day, he truly wanted them to have some success."
Sowder distinctly remembers two particular plays that stand out even 10 years later.
"The first Tyrel was dribbling the ball outside the top of the circle as time was running down at the end of the first half," he said. "With just a few seconds remaining, he quickly took a couple of dribbles to the foul line as his defender closely guarded him - then quickly stepped back to just outside the 3-point line and calmly sank a 3-pointer as the buzzer went off."
There was more.
"Tyrel was dribbling full speed down the right side of the court," Sowder continued. "There were two defenders between him and the basket. At the right foul line elbow, he split the defenders - switched the ball to his left hand - took one more dribble and laid the ball off the backboard with his left hand and into the basket."
Jeff, Tom Hibbard and I - who have comprised the 3-man officiating crew for 20 years - couldn't believe what we had just seen.
"While we had all seen this play at the college and professional level, our jaws dropped as we had just seen this done by a 6th grader," Sowder said.
Ty, who was born in Eureka, and his family moved to Burlington a year later. Stacy took the boys basketball job at Burlington. Things now really took off for the Reed family.
Tyrel played MAYB ball until the end of his freshman year when he moved on to AAU ball the remainder of his high school career.
"Ty excelled at athletics at an early age," Stacy remembered, "but I would say when he started 7th grade I thought he had a chance to play basketball somewhere in college. I didn't know until about his freshman into his sophomore year what level that would be."
"I first remember Tyrel as a 'gym rat little kid' who was always around the high school practices where his Dad was the coach," Sowder said. "He would dribble and shoot on the side goals while practice was taking place and as soon as practice was over he was on the big court playing 3-on-3 or 1-on-1 games against the high school players."
Ty naturally got his basketball abilities from his Dad, who was a standout cager himself in his prep days as a Hoisington Cardinal. He started out looking at K-State and Colorado State, but an ankle injury forced him to alter his plans.
"I had screws put into my ankle during my senior year," he said. "Once I was injured, I lost out on quite a few scholarships. But everything worked out fine for me."
Stacy was Ty's high school coach.
"His record in high school was 96-4 and one of the games we lost he was out with an ankle injury," Stacy noted.
Burlington was nearly unstoppable Ty's junior year when two Division I athletes donned the Wildcat uniform. Senior Geoff Reeve signed a letter-of-intent with Cornell.
Then came Ty's senior year, 2006-07, when college coaches like KU's Bill Self and North Carolina's Roy Williams were making themselves known in Coffey County's county seat. The distractions weren't bad, Stacy said, except on game nights.
"Most of Ty's recruitment went through me and we set most of the meetings up with coaches during the morning when he would do the workouts," Stacy said. "Ty had a little over 50 Division I offers, but we narrowed them down to 6 or 7 by the beginning of the senior year."
Those fortunate few included North Carolina, Missouri, Oklahoma, Stanford, Missouri State and Kansas.
The chance of playing close to home and earning a national championship lured him to KU. His freshman year, Mario Chalmers brought Jayhawk Nation to their feet with his game-tying 3-pointer in the national championship game against Memphis. Afterward, an emotional scene took place when father and son embraced as the Jayhawks celebrated their school's third national title since the 1950s.
"I told him to enjoy the ride and try to win another one," Stacy remembers telling his son. "They can never take it away from you."
As for the old man?
"It was one of the most unbelievable experience I've had in my life! Wow," Stacy said.
Stacy gave up coaching at Burlington once Ty arrived in Lawrence. He still teaches there but wanted the flexibility so he could follow his son for four years and not worry about drawing up X's and O's as the Wildcat mentor.
"It probably has been some of the most special times in my life," Stacy said, whose son will play his final game at storied Allen Fieldhouse in two months. "I have had a front row seat so to speak on watching my son mature and grow from a little guy to the man he is today. KU is such a special place that I can't imagine him anywhere else."
Ty's future involves one of two things.
"Ty has been admitted into med school at KU," Stacy said, whose son will major in Physical Therapy. "He plans on either playing somewhere next year or going to med school whichever works out best."
"It has been 10 years since Tyrel played in our small local tournament," Sowder noted. "He has had great success since then and now we all hope we get to watch him win one more national championship at KU."
Not bad for a boy who got his start in Eureka! That, my friends, is Powerful Stuff! .
