BY ANDY TAYLOR

Caney Valley High School’s baseball team put itself in the state records book on Monday night.

Caney Valley’s 42-26 victory over Eureka — that’s not a misprint — established several state records and also tied an existing record in the annals of Kansas high school baseball.

Ted Hayes of the Kansas Sports Hall of Fame said the 42 runs scored by Caney Valley in the second game of Monday’s doubleheader ties a state record for most runs by one team in a game. Blue Valley Stillwell set that record in a 1999 game.

Hayes said the game’s results also established several new records, including most runs by a losing team (26) and most runs by two teams in one game (68).

Caney Valley won the first round of Monday’s twinbill by a 17-1 score in three innings. That means the Bullpups scored a total of 59 runs in a doubleheader, which, Hays, said, establishes a new state record.

Les Zoch, Caney Valley head baseball coach, said a high volume of errors by both teams led to the marathon scoring match in a bone-chilling Eureka stadium on Monday night.

“It wasn’t pretty for either team,” said Zoch.

The game lasted more than three hours, and the doubleheader took almost six hours to complete.

A 12-year-old boy sustained an accidental gunshot wound to the abdomen while crawling under a fence west of Elk City at about 6 p.m., Wednesday, April 1.

Montgomery County Sheriff Robert Dierks said the 12-year-old boy and his brother were crawling under a fence on a hunting trip when a gun discharged, striking the 12-year-old in the abdomen. The boy was lifeflighted to a Wichita hospital, where he was taken into surgery Monday night. The family reported that the boy was out of surgery in critical but stable condition.

BY ANDY TAYLOR

He’s only 12 years old, but rural Independence resident Richy Yates is already rubbing elbows with one of professional racing’s top names.

And, because of his friendship with professional racer Dan Wheldon, Yates has made racing more than just a passing interest. It’s a family obsession.

Here is how it all began . . .

Back in 2006, Richy Yates was starting to become interested in professional racing, not the NASCAR ranks that has proven popular for many racing buffs but the Indy Car League, best known for its Indianapolis 500. Among the top names in the Indy Car League is Dan Wheldon, a racer who earned the double-checkered flag at the Indianapolis 500 in 2005.

While searching the internet one day for information about Wheldon, the young Yates found Wheldon’s e-mail address and jotted a note congratulating Wheldon on his success.

Richy didn’t know if the e-mail would even reach Wheldon on his busy travels.

Lo and behold, Wheldon responded — with a personal note back to Yates. The racer encouraged Yates to become interested in racing, perhaps on the go-kart circuit.

And, even though Yates had a go-kart that he rode around his rural Independence farm, he never thought about becoming active in the amateur racing circuit.

That e-mail from Wheldon changed things for Yates.

“After that first response from Dan, Richy was totally hooked,” said Alicia Yates, Richy’s mother.

The Yates family went to Indy Racing League races at the Kansas Speedway, where they got the chance to meet Wheldon in person.
The Yates family then bought a competitive kart at the Tulsa Kart Club and started Richy on his quest for hot laps at area go-kart road courses.

Since then, the entire Yates family has jumped headfirst into a passion for kart racing. In 2008, Richy won first place in the Kart Mid-American Racing Series in the age 8-12 division. And, he’s got the trophy — almost as tall as he — to prove it.

Asked if he has started a trophy room for his recent success on the kart series, Yates laughed and said, “My trophies are on my dresser.”

Yates Racing takes the family to road courses throughout the midwest, and Richy will be tested on his racing skills at a road course race this weekend in Norman, Okla. Richy’s kart is a higher-performing vehicle than conventional go-karts. And, the Yates kart — surrounded with the bold number 4 — has been known to reach speeds of 80 miles per hour.

With such high speeds and such a simple vehicle, the go-kart racing circuit has become a passion for the Yates family.
“It’s a full-time hobby,” said Alicia. “Once you get a taste of it, you’re hooked.

“We leave on Friday mornings, drive all day to get to a road course, practice on Saturday mornings, race on Saturday afternoons and Sundays, and then head back home late Sunday night. We’ll work in the garage all week, getting the kart ready for the next race.”
And, when Richy isn’t bound for a raceway with his large trailer in tow, the youngster is on his home computer, e-mailing Wheldon for his weekly chat with the well-known Indy Racing League celeb.

“We talk about once a week,” said Richy. “He’ll ask about my race, and I’ll talk about his.”

Dick and Alicia Yates both say they are amazed that their son — not yet even old enough to shave — is able to swap war stories with a professional athlete.

“They’ll talk like they are best of friends,” said Dick.

Wheldon himself had a similar situation when he was cutting his teeth into the racing circuit. In an interview on Panther Racing.com, the British-born racer said he cherished memories of being with his family in his early years of racing.

“They are some of the fondest memories that I have had in my life so far,” said Wheldon. “Other than getting married, winning the Indianapolis 500, and the birth of my son Sebastian, those memories traveling every weekend with my father are unbelievable.”

So, why would Wheldon take time out of his busy schedule to chat with a racing fan in Kansas?

“It is great for me to try to be a positive influence on kids like Richy,” continued Wheldon. “Racing is a tough sport, and anything I can do to help somebody coming up, I feel like I owe that to this sport because it has been great to me. If Richy emailing me or my emailing him to offer support or advice helps him achieve his dreams, then that is the least that I can do.”

• Montgomery County Chronicle editor Andy Taylor is a lifelong resident of Montgomery County and also interested in knowing about the unique people and places of the county. If you have an idea for Taylor’s “This Is My Montgomery County” feature, send an e-mail to him at chronicle@taylornews.org, or call (620) 336-2100 or (620) 879-2156.

BY ANDY TAYLOR

Area residents are bracing for an early-spring storm that is expected to dump wintry precipitation on southeast Kansas, including Montgomery County.

Jim Miller, Montgomery County Emergency Preparedness Director, said Montgomery County will be on the eastern fringe of the cold front when it rolls into the region late Friday night and continuing through Saturday afternoon. He said that after conferring with the National Weather Service in Wichita on Thursday, he anticipated seeing a mixture of persistent rain followed by heavy snow.

Compounding the wintry precipitation will be high winds up to 35 miles per hour from the north. Those gusts will keep temperatures down and also blow snow into drifts. Travel is discouraged during the cold front.

BY ANDY TAYLOR

INDEPENDENCE — A Montgomery County landmark not only is the setting of a new children’s book by Independence author Wilma Andrews but the castle-like home called Belmont also is a trove for intrigue and family history.

Andrews has released her second book, “Dominica’s Castle,” published by Mennonite Press, after her 2007 book, “Tag-A-Long,” hit area bookshelves. “Dominica’s Castle” is more than a children’s tale of a family’s move from the Swiss Alps to the Kansas prairies. It is a biographical account of Andrews’ Swiss-born grandmother who often told stories of the large Belmont Castle that once stood near her childhood village in Switzerland.

Today, another Belmont Castle, located on county road 4500 between Independence and Cherryvale, stands as a monument to that ancient Swiss castle often mentioned by Dominica (Calonder) Tucker to her children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

But to know why a Montgomery County home bears the resemblance to an ancient European castle, you have to know the story of Dominica, the main subject in Andrews’ book and also Andrews’ grandmother.

Dominica Calonder was raised near the Swiss village of Trin, where remnants of a 15th century castle called Belmont stood atop the jagged cliffs that overlooked the town. Andrews writes that Dominica often dreamed of living in a castle called Belmont, but those ideas were dashed when the Calonder family made a long voyage to America in the 1880s. The Swiss family found its way to the middle of America to take advantage of job opportunities (Dominica’s father was a stonemason). The family settled in the Independence area, where Dominica, as a teenager, earned a job as a cook at the Montgomery County Poor Farm, which was located southeast of Independence. It was at the poor farm where she met a carpenter, Marrell “Rella” Tucker, whom she married in 1898.

When hard times hit Montgomery County in 1929, the economic downturn could be felt in the Tucker home. They needed to downsize from their large two-story farm house located one mile east of the Verdigris River in Drum Creek Township. They were able to find one of the available homes built as employee housing for the Edgar Zinc Smelting Company in Cherryvale, which, like many of the industries caught in the grips of the Great Depression, was laying off workers due to the economic depression.

A small “smelter home” was acquired and moved from Cherryvale to the Tucker property. And, to better insulate the crudely-built smelter home, the Tuckers decided to erect rock walls (stone was abundant on the Tucker farm) as an insulation barrier.

What better way to design the home’s exterior than to recollect on Dominica’s memories of the ancient castle that cast idealic dreams on her childhood. The rock walls not only were a monument to the mountain castle that intrigued Dominica during her youth but they also served a more practical purpose: to keep the home cool in the summer and warm in the winter.

That’s why the smelter home-turned-Belmont Castle resembles something from a Frommer’s Travel Guide. Gargoyles stand sentry to the castle’s entrance, and large turrets stand on each corner. Even several shiny knights stand in the castle to complement the distinctly European atmosphere.
“This is the castle that my grandmother dreamed of,” said Andrews, a retired school teacher. “That’s the primary theme of this book: to never let go of your dreams. May you never lose your quest and curiosity about your family and your history.”

The home also is decked with the word “BELMONT” clearly spelled atop the stone wall near the front entrance. However, the word is not embedded in stone with shiny ceramic tiles or rare stones. Instead, the Tuckers used beer bottles — green in color and found in a nearby trash heap — to make the word a permanent fixture of the home. The bottoms of the beer bottles carefully spell out each letter. And, within the attic, the bottle neck and mouth protrude through the wall.

“My grandparents were practical people,” said Andrews. “They made use of a lot of materials, even if it meant using old beer bottles found in a trash dump.”

What is not mentioned in the book is the modern-day history of Belmont. Andrews’ nephew, Joe Tucker, and wife, Lara, bought the house in 2002 — after it had been owned by non-family members for about 60 years — and began an expansion project in 2005. The tough part of the project was blending the exterior so that it would appear much like the rock walls that were erected in the early 1930s.

“This was a self-taught process,” said Joe, laughingly. “We had a two hour lesson about laying rock and brick, and then it was up to us to complete it.”

Tucker said he blended the masonry patterns in the same way the stonemasons laid the rock and mortar some 70 years earlier.

“There was nothing simple about it,” he said. “I don’t know how many tons of rock I used, but I know I used about 15,000 pounds of mortar mix just on the exterior walls of the expansion.”

The newly-expanded Belmont home likely would appear much like the castle that Tucker’s great-grandmother would have remembered as a child in Switzerland.

“Seeing what Joe and Lara had to go through to expand this house made me appreciate what my grandparents went through when they moved that smelter house from Cherryvale,” said Andrews. “They probably didn’t have the luxury of power tools or electrical equipment. Everything was done by hand, including hauling huge rocks to form the exterior walls.”

And, what would Dominica have thought if she could have seen the old smelter house become a larger house . . . or a children’s book written in her memory?
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“I think she would have been impressed,” said Andrews.

• Montgomery County Chronicle editor Andy Taylor is a lifelong resident of Montgomery County and also interested in knowing about the unique people and places of the county. If you have an idea for Taylor’s “This Is My Montgomery County” feature, send an e-mail to him at chronicle@taylornews.org, or call (620) 336-2100 or (620) 879-2156.

The Cherryvale Lady Chargers’ season came to an end Saturday afternoon with a 58-38 loss to Rock Creek in the consolation game of the class 3A state tournament in Hutchinson.

Cherryvale finishes its season as the fourth-best team in class 3A and with a 19-7 record.

Poor shooting dominated Cherryvale’s game as the Lady Chargers trailed for the entire contest. Cherryvale hit only 30 percent of its field goal attempts (16 for 53), 20 percent of the three-point attempts (3 for 15) and 43 percent of the free throws (3 for 7). Meanwhile, Rock Creek appeared immovable as the team canned 51 percent of its shots from the field, 50 percent of its three pointers, and 60 percent of its charity shots.

The game was the finale for CHS seniors Kelsey Overacker, Alex Hugo, Sara Schwaninger, Megan Stewart and Abby Ezard.

More details of the Cherryvale team’s apperance in the state tournament will be printed in the March 19 edition of the Montgomery County Chronicle.

Fouls plagued the Cherryvale Lady Chargers in a 65-52 loss to the Southwestern Heights Mustangs in the semi-final round of the class 3A state tournament in Hutchinson on Friday night.

The loss dropped Cherryvale to the consolation game on Saturday, where the Lady Chargers will play in a noon contest against Rock Creek. Rock Creek lost to Wichita Collegiate, 42-40, in the other semi-final game on Friday.

In the championship game, Wichita Collegiate and Southwestern Heights will play at 4 p.m., Saturday.

KUSN (98.1 FM) will broadcast the Cherryvale/Rock Creek game beginning at noon Saturday.

CANEY — The USMTS (United States Modified Touring Series) Casey’s General Stores National Tour has cancelled its running of races at the Caney Valley Speedway for Friday night, March 13.

“After conferring with the USMTS and looking at our weather forecasts, it was best to cancel the races for now,” said Kerry Gorby, Caney Valley Speedway manager and promoter. “We’ll try our best to get the national tour to make an appearance in Caney later in the year.”

Two NASCAR veterans — Ken Schrader and Kenny Wallace — were scheduled to appear at Friday’s races at the Caney Valley Speedway.

The Cherryvale High School women’s basketball team will travel to the class 3A state tournament next week following the Lady Chargers’ 59-50 win over the Frontenac Raider in the finals of the class 3A sub-state tournament in Southeast-Cherokee on Saturday night. 

Cherryvale (18-5) is the fourth seed in the eight-team state tournament and will play Jayhawk-Linn (18-5), the fifth seed team, in an 8:15 p.m., game on Wednesday, March 11, at the Hutchinson Sports Arena. Should Cherryvale win its opening round game, then the Lady Chargers are guaranteed two more games, including the semi-finals on Friday and the championship or consolation game (depending on outcome of the semi-final round) on Saturday. 

In other first-round games of the state tournament, Southwestern Heights (22-1) will play Hillsboro (14-9); Rock Creek (21-1) will play Riley County (17-6), and Wichita Collegiate (21-2) will play Beloit (18-5). All first-round games of the state tournament will be played on Wednesday. 

More details about the Lady Chargers’ appearance at the state tournament will be posted on this website on Monday. 

In other basketball games, the Cherryvale High School men’s basketball team saw its season come to a close with a 71-48 loss to the Galena Bulldogs in the class 3A sub-state finale on Saturday night. More details about the Chargers’ season will be printed in the March 12 edition of the Montgomery County Chronicle.