By KARISSA NIEHOFF National Federation of State High School Associations andBILL FAFLICK Kansas State High School Activities Association
Many people would agree that their years in high school were some of the best years of their lives—particularly those individuals who were members of a sports team or participated in other activities such as the marching band or debate team.
In many cases, team members become lifelong friends. Reunion parties are held from time to time as teammates return to remember the fun—more so than the outcome of games or events—they had participating in high school activities. Quite often, reunions for sports teams are staged during the highlight of each sports season—the state playoffs.
And as the calendar turns to November, there is nothing like the excitement of high school football playoffs in cities across Kansas and throughout the nation every Friday night.
While each team will be trying to advance to the state championship, the outcome of the games is only a part of the experience for those individuals in attendance.
Why? Because the people in the stands at high school football playoffs are moms and dads, grandparents, aunts and uncles, sisters and brothers, neighbors down the street, fellow students, and longtime residents of the community. People in the stands know the players on the field. Win or lose, their support and love is always there.
There is no tradition in sports with the history of high school football. There are 30 rivalry games (60 high schools) that started before 1900 and continue today, the longest of which is Connecticut’s New London High School and Norwich Free Academy, which have been playing annually since 1875.
In Michigan, Battle Creek Central and Kalamazoo Central have been playing since 1896. In Massachusetts, the Wellesley-Needham Heights rivalry dates to 1882. And in Colorado, Pueblo Central and Pueblo Centennial have been matched since 1892.
Although there are more options for entertainment on a Friday night than ever before, there is still nothing to match high school football playoffs in the fall. With all the people attending games of the 14,247 high schools that play football, expect more than 10 million fans each Friday night—easily the #1 fan base in the country.
As you attend high school football playoff games this year in Kansas, remember that the players, coaches and game officials deserve your utmost support, encouragement and respect. While advancing in the playoffs is the desire of each team, the ultimate objective of high school sports and activities is to have fun and enjoy these special years.
We urge you to continue to support the high school teams in your community!
Kariss NieHoff is executive director of the National Federation of State High School Associations and Bill Faflick is executive director of the Kansas State High School Activities Association.
KANSAS CITY (AP) — Authorities say three people have been killed in separate shootings in a four-hour span in Kansas City.
Police on the scene of Wednesday’s shooting investigation photo courtesy KCTV
The first shooting happened just after 3 p.m. The victim was found on a street and died at the scene.
Three hours later, officers were responding to a report of a shooting when they learned that a gunshot victim had been taken to a nearby McDonald’s restaurant. Officers found the woman in the passenger seat of a vehicle. She died at the scene.
Authorities say a third person was fatally shot around 7:15 p.m. on the front porch of a home. Police say the victim was in his late teens or early 20s.
Police Sgt. Jake Becchina says there is “no indication that the events are related in any way.”
GEARY COUNTY— Law enforcement authorities are investigating two suspects in connection with the alleged kidnapping of a one-year old boy in Junction City Friday and have identified those arrested.
Clarence Watkins, 31, Junction City and Pamela Broadnax, 30, Kansas City, remain in custody in Geary County, according to online jail records.
Watkins is being held on requested charges that include kidnapping, battery, flee or attempt to elude LEO and aggravated endangerment of child. Broadnax is being held on requested charges of kidnapping, battery, flee or attempt to flee LEO, and aggravated endangerment of child.
Law enforcement on the scene of the arreFriday photo courtesy WIBW TV
The incident began just before 2 p.m. Friday as Kansas Highway Patrol and Junction City police tracked a Chevrolet Silverado pickup down Interstate 70. Authorities ultimately located the SUV west of Topeka. The pursuit ended west of Lawrence according to Junction City Police. The one-year old infant was rescued safely.
Authorities have released no additional details.
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GEARY COUNTY —A man and a woman were taken into custody following the alleged kidnapping of a one-year old infant boy in the 1000 block of West 6th Street in Junction City and a pursuit that ended west of Lawrence Friday, according to Junction City Police. The one-year old infant was rescued safely.
The incident began just before 2 p.m. Friday with the Kansas Highway Patrol joining Junction City police in tracking the Chevrolet Silverado pickup as it traveled down Interstate 70. It was located west of Topeka but was eventually stopped farther east.
No injuries were reported. Police did not release names of the suspects.
TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — A top Republican legislator’s complaint has launched an investigation into whether the commission that screens Kansas Supreme Court applicants violated the state’s open meetings law in picking three finalists for Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly to consider in filling a vacancy.
The complaint from Senate President Susan Wagle is likely to intensify efforts by fellow conservatives to give legislators the power to block a governor’s appointments to the state’s highest court, something they cannot do now. Republicans have had a renewed interest in such a measure since a Supreme Court decision in April protecting abortion rights.
The commission named the finalists for Kelly in mid-October, and they include a Topeka-area trial judge opposed by Kansans for Life, the state’s most influential anti-abortion group. The lawyer-led nominating commission voted on candidates in a public meeting but used paper ballots so that how each member voted wasn’t disclosed during the meeting.
Wagle, a conservative Wichita Republican, filed a complaint Tuesday with Attorney General Derek Schmidt, another Republican. She urged him to declare that the commission violated the Open Meetings Act and its actions are therefore void. Schmidt turned the investigation over to the district attorney in her home county, Sedgwick County.
“Not only do Kansans deserve to know how each commissioner voted, it’s the law,” Wagle said in a statement Wednesday. “This secret vote clearly violated the law and integrity of the system.”
Commission Chairman Mikel Stout, a Wichita attorney, said the panel is making records of how individual members voted available to anyone seeking them.
“We did preserve all of that information,” he said. “It’s all available.”
The Associated Press obtained copies of the ballots Wednesday through the clerk of the state’s appellate courts in Topeka, along with a summary of the commission’s full meeting. The ballots list each member’s preferred list of candidates in each round of voting.
The Supreme Court finalists are Deputy Kansas Attorney General Dennis Depew, Assistant State Solicitor General Steven Obermeier and Shawnee County District Judge Evelyn Wilson, who is chief judge for a district that includes Topeka, the state capital. Kansans for Life opposes Wilson because of her husband’s past political contributions to Kelly and other abortion rights supporters who ran for office.
Schmidt declined to investigate Wagle’s complaint because Depew and Obermeier work for his office. And he avoided sending the case to the Shawnee County district attorney because Wilson, a finalist, is a judge there.
Kelly faces a Dec. 17 deadline to make the appointment.
Kansas Senate Minority Leader Anthony Hensley called Wagle’s complaint a ploy to build support for changing the selection system. He said if the commission did something wrong, the remedy should be to fine it, not void its actions.
But he questioned whether there’s a problem because the ballots are available for people to see.
Retirements will give Kelly two appointments to the seven-member high court in the next few months, and whoever she chooses will go on the court with no oversight from the GOP-controlled Legislature. Her two Republican predecessors had only one appointment between them in the eight years before she took office in January.
The nine-member commission has long interviewed Supreme Court candidates publicly but its deliberations on potential finalists were closed to the public until a 2016 law.
The commission’s Oct. 18 meeting to pick finalists for Kelly’s first appointment was the first time that law came into play. Members had a 90-minute closed session to discuss confidential background checks and personal information about candidates, as allowed, before reconvening their open meeting to vote.
Members had four rounds of paper ballots, without discussing individual candidates’ merits. When the candidates had been whittled down to three, the commission voted unanimously to forward their names to Kelly.
Stout said the commission settled on three strong candidates so the governor “can’t miss” with her appointment. He acknowledged that having public deliberations is “a little awkward” and potentially inhibited comments.
Wagle and other Republicans favor abolishing the commission and having the governor’s Supreme Court appointees face Senate confirmation, arguing that such a process would be more transparent. Making the change would require amending the state constitution.
Jeanne Gawdun, a Kansans for Life lobbyist, said the issue raised by Wagle “screams loud and clear” for change.
State Sen. Ty Masterson, another conservative Wichita-area Republican pushing for Senate confirmation of justices, said: “It just shows that you can be technically open to the public and still hide everything.”
RENO COUNTY — Fire crews responded and extinguished a pair of brush fires Wednesday in Reno County.
Just before 3p.m., they responded to a fire in the 1,100 block of E 56th Avenue, according to a social media report from the Hutchinson Fire Department.
Just after 4:30 p.m. they worked a second fire at 56th and Yaggy Road. Authorities have not reported any injuries from the fires or additional details.
The grassland fire danger will be high again Friday , according to the National Weather Service.
SEDGWICK COUNTY — Law enforcement authorities are investigating an armed robbery and have made an arrest.
Wright photo Sedgwick Co.
Just before 1:30p.m. Tuesday, police responded to report of a robbery at an apartment complex in the 4200 Block of South Hydraulic in Wichita, according to officer Charley Davidson. At the scene, a 19-year-old man told police he went to the location and believed he was to meet a girl he had been texting.
When entering the apartment complex building, a suspect identified later as 20-year-old Ricky Wright and a 15-year-old boy pulled out a handgun and knife and demanded money.
The victim gave them cash and the suspects fled in a red Honda civic, according to Davidson. Police spotted the vehicle in the 1300 Block of South Ellis, made a traffic stop and took Wright and the 15-year-old into custody. Police also recovered a handgun, knife and the victim’s cash.
Wright and the juvenile are being held on requested charges that include aggravated robbery, according to Davidson. Police do not believe a girl was involved in the case.
LARAMIE, Wyo. (AP) — A truck driver from Kansas has been sentenced to between 10 and 20 years in prison for falling asleep at the wheel of her semitractor-trailer and causing a fatal crash in Wyoming.
Hightower photo Albany County
48-year-old Tonya Hightower was sentenced Tuesday for the March 2018 accident that killed 57-year-old Vidal Madera of Laramie.
The commercial truck driver from Kansas pleaded not guilty to aggravated homicide by vehicle.
A jury found her guilty in August after determining her decision to drive on Interstate 80 while knowingly fatigued constituted recklessness.
Hightower told a Wyoming Highway Patrol trooper at the scene that she had taken leftover pills from a 2017 surgery including hydrocodone, a prescription opioid pain medication.
Court records say she did not test positive for narcotics when blood was drawn later.
LAWRENCE — Law enforcement authorities are investigating a shooting in a fast-food restaurant parking lot and have a suspect in custody.
Just before 6:30 p.m. October 27, police were called to the McDonalds at 1309 W. 6th Street in Lawrence in response to a shooting that had just occurred, according to officer Patrick Compton. Upon arriving, officers discovered a 50-year-old man who had been shot in his car.
On Wednesday, police reported they identified 27-year-old Howard Levite of Leavenworth County as a suspect. He was arrested November 1, in Jackson County, Missouri on unrelated charges.
He is being held in Jackson County pending an extradition hearing and faces charges of of attempted aggravated robbery and aggravated battery.
The victim has been released from the hospital and is recovering, according to Compton.
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LAWRENCE — Law enforcement authorities are investigating a shooting and continue to search for a suspect.
Just before 6:30 p.m. Saturday, police were called to the McDonalds at 1309 W. 6th Street in Lawrence in response to a shooting that had just occurred, according to office Patrick Compton. Upon arriving, officers discovered a 50-year-old man who had been shot in his car.
This individual was treated at the scene and transported to an area hospital with significant injuries.
Police are currently looking for a suspect described as a black male wearing a red hoodie, red sweat pants and carrying a black bag or backpack in connection to this shooting.
They navigate Wichita streets with the distinctive rumble of their time-tested engines, belching the distinctive smell of diesel and a concoction of carbon monoxide, particulate matter and nitrogen oxides.
That exhaust clouds the air locally and adds to the greenhouse gases steadily transforming the climate globally.
The city’s new transit director, Mike Tann, imagines a cleaner, quieter fleet moving people at a lower price.
Wichita’s buses are going electric. The first new, battery-powered model wheels into town this month.
It will be the first operating electric bus in Kansas and one of 11 the city will get in the next year. The delivery offers a sign of transit agencies and city fleets leading a move away from internal combustion engines and the pollution they cough into the air.
Before coming to Wichita, Tann worked in Erie, Pennsylvania. About half of that city’s buses run on compressed natural gas, an alternative fuel that pollutes less than traditional diesel engines. When he arrived in Kansas, he was surprised that Wichita officials had never seriously looked at alternative fuels.
Transportation emissions make up the largest source of planet-warming greenhouse gases in the United States. As producers of emissions — and as a potential solution for reducing how much people drive in their cars — transit agencies could play a key role in any major reduction.
“The ultimate goal is to get people to use the (bus) system because they want to,” Tann said. “And electrifying it seems to get people thinking about it and it also gets us off the fossil fuels too.”
California-based ProTerra didn’t just put electric motors and batteries into existing diesel buses. It designed its buses around electric technology. The company has sold more than 700 since it’s founding in 2014.
Four new chargers had to be installed in the Wichita Transit bus barn to prepare for the all-electric buses. Credit Brian Grimmett / Kansas News Service
Then, using another grant, Tann bought seven smaller electric buses from a company called Custom Coach Works. They’ll replace aging buses that look like old trolleys and run downtown Wichita routes.
To prepare for the arrival of the new buses, the agency needed to remodel and upgrade its bus barn. It now has enough electrical infrastructure in place to charge as many as 14 buses.
Most of the upgrades were purchased with the grant money, but some came from the city’s electricity provider, Evergy.
The utility is also offering the city a special bus-charging rate — higher during the day when network-wide demand for electricity is at its highest, and lower during the night when most businesses are closed and using less electricity.
The buses will almost exclusively be charged overnight. The charging process works just like it would for an electric sedan, such as a Tesla. Transit workers will plug the busses in at the end of the day and by the time the buses need to head out the next morning they’ll be charged with enough power to go about 150 miles. While that’s less distance than some electric cars out on the road now can travel on a charge, it’s enough range for a bus to last a full day on Wichita’s streets.
And that electrical charge will cost less than the equivalent in diesel gas would. Power plants do add to local pollution and climate change, but they can power a vehicle with less damage to the environment than an internal combustion engine.
Electric buses also don’t need frequent oil changes and replace their brake pads less frequently. Wichita Transit estimates each electric bus will save the city $462 thousand over its lifetime — 12 years — compared to its diesel counterpart.
In a way, the transit agencies serve as guinea pigs for Evergy.
“It allows us to go back and understand our infrastructure issues, or if there would be any issues.” Kim Winslow, Evergy’s director of energy solutions said. “It allows us to take a look at what the charging impact will be on our system.”
Diesel-powered buses parked at Wichita’s downtown transit hub. Credit Brian Grimmett / Kansas News Service
Smaller transit agencies like Wichita are great for testing new technology. Without spending any of the city’s money (thanks to federal grants), they can gain valuable knowledge about infrastructure needs, maintenance costs and long-term reliability. If it works well for Wichita, other larger transit agencies might choose to follow.
As more electric buses hit the roads, they expose their technology to ordinary consumers. They, in turn, might become more likely to buy electric vehicles.
The Kansas City Area Transportation Agency serves seven counties in Missouri and Kansas. It’s not been able to get federal grants to purchase electric buses, but decided to buy two anyway.
While the new electric buses will only make up a small fraction of KCATA’s fleet of more than 250 buses, agency officials said it’s a step.
“We’re not going to jump into the deep end with all of the fleet,” KCATA CEO Robbie Makinen said. “But we are going to be stepping into that process and as the technology gets better — see where we’re at.”
Other government agencies are experimenting with a range of electric vehicles, too. In an effort to reduce the carbon footprint of its fleet of more than 1,300 vehicles, Olathe, Kansas, purchased compressed natural gas powered trash trucks, hybrids, and four electric Nissan Leafs.
“There’s going to be more and more of it coming that fit more of what we do here,” Olathe fleet manager Josh Wood said. “And the more of that that comes online, the more that we’ll adopt.”
The city is even starting to consider purchasing electric trash trucks.
It’s a trend that’s growing quickly around the world. Analysis from Bloomberg New Energy Finance finds that city fleets increasingly use electric-powered vehicles, especially buses.
“There are more than 30 major cities around the world that have promised to only procur zero-emission buses from 2025 onward,” Bloomberg NEF analyst Nick Albanese said. “And those are in places as diverse as Moscow, Cape Town, and Austin.”
Right now, the numbers are still small in the United States — there are only about 600 E-buses on the streets — but that’s double the number there were just last year.
By 2040, Bloomberg NEF estimates that electric buses will make up as much as 80% of the world’s fleet.
In Wichita, transit director Tann estimates every diesel bus in the fleet will be replaced by an electric- or hydrogen-powered bus as early as 2027.
“Our plan,” Tann said, “is to never buy another diesel-powered bus.”
Brian Grimmett reports on the environment, energy and natural resources for KMUW in Wichita and the Kansas News Service. You can follow him on Twitter @briangrimmett or email him at [email protected]. The Kansas News Service is a collaboration of KCUR, Kansas Public Radio, KMUW and High Plains Public Radio focused on the health and well-being of Kansans, their communities and civic life.
TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — Kansas Republican Congress members are rejecting a request from the state’s lone congressional Democrat that they join her in opposing a federal policy that will allow faith-based adoption agencies to get taxpayer funding even if they turn away same-sex couples.
Rep. Sharice Davids sent a letter Tuesday asking GOP colleagues to use their relationships with President Donald Trump to help reverse the policy, which rolls back a regulation from former President Barak Obama’s term barring discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity. Davids is among nine LGBTQ members of Congress.
I’m calling on the entire Kansas delegation to stand up for children & families in our state – and across the country – and urge the President to prevent this rule from going into effect. 4/5
Reps. Roger Marshall, Steve Watkins and Ron Estes issued a joint response supporting the Trump administration’s decision after receiving Davids’ letter. Sens. Jerry Moran and Pat Roberts also say they support it.
BISMARCK, N.D. — Federal regulators have ordered the Keystone pipeline to remain shut down until its Canadian owner takes corrective action aimed at determining the cause of a breach that leaked an estimated 383,000 gallons of oil in northeastern North Dakota.
The Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration issued the order Tuesday to TC Energy. The action comes one week after the pipeline leak was discovered and affected about 22,500 square feet of land near Edinburg, N.D.
The order requires the company to send the affected portion of the pipe to an independent laboratory for testing.
TC Energy says it has about 200 people are at the site “focused on clean-up and remediation activities.”
The company says about 180,600 gallons of crude oil has been recovered.
A strong cold front will push its way through the region Wednesday evening, according to the National Weather Service at Dodge City.
North winds of 25 to 35 mph will be accompanied by a possibility of precipitation in the form of drizzle or freezing drizzle, as the temperature is expected to fall to the low- to mid-20s overnight. Those conditions are more likely to occur in southwest Kansas. Extreme northwest Kansas including Goodland also could experience some ice, according to the NWS’s Goodland office.
The threat of freezing drizzle should end by daybreak Thursday, the NWS predicted.
The temperature will make a hard turn from winter back to fall by Saturday, with temperatures moving well into the 70s, the NWS said. Weekend winds of 10 to 15 mph, the NWS also is warning of an elevated fire risk.
TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — The acting secretary of the Kansas Department of Corrections said a mass commutation of offenders was worth considering during his confirmation hearing.
Jeff Zmuda was asked to comment Tuesday on what happened one day earlier, when more than 450 inmates walked out of the doors of prisons across Oklahoma as part of a massive commutation. Zmuda said Kansas officials are looking at several ways to make reforms and ease overcrowding and “that’s certainly one that could be considered.”
Senate Majority Leader Jim Denning said releasing non-violent inmates “sounds like a fantastic idea,” but cautioned that if someone who has been released early commits a violent act “there’s hell to pay.”
The hearing ended with a Senate committee recommending that Zmuda be confirmed. The full Senate will vote early next year.
By KARISSA NIEHOFF 
