Storm blows through Olympics
By DIANE GASPER-O'BRIEN
Athletes from Kansas took Lincoln, Neb., by storm last week.
And several area residents came home with medals to show for it.
The Kansas Storm basketball team defeated North Carolina 24-23 in the title game of Division 5 to claim the gold medals at the USA Special Olympics National Games in Lincoln.
The 10-member gold-medalist squad included Donny Furrey and Tyler Jones from Hays, Todd Van Schuyver from Plainville and Gusty Patterson from Russell.
Another Hays resident, Chuck Stansbury, brought home three awards in bowling.
Stansbury won a bronze medal as part of the third-place Kansas team, and he also won ribbons for his fourth-place effort in singles and sixth place in doubles.
In its championship basketball game, the Storm was down by four points with a little over 30 seconds left in the game.
But a couple of long baskets and a baseball pass the length of the court for the winning layup with three seconds left gave Kansas the win, and the gold medals.
"I thought it was over," said Dave Van Schuyver, Todd's dad who helps coach area players in basketball. "Fortunately, (the players) kept playing."
Dave Van Schuyver said he thought it would be a good game after North Carolina had given Kansas its only loss in pool play.
That loss made Kansas the No. 2 seed in medal play, giving North Carolina the top seed.
North Carolina defeated North Dakota in the semifinals, and Kansas got by South Dakota, setting up the exciting showdown.
Jones also had been part of an exciting finish in a big game back in 2009 when he went to the Super Bowl in Tampa, Fla.
Jones, recovering from a brain tumor, had received the trip to the NFL's season finale through the Make-A-Wish Foundation.
"Lincoln did a great job of supporting Special Olympics," Pam Jones, Tyler's mother who accompanied him on the trip, said of the National Games. "This was better than the Super Bowl."
Tyler Jones, an Arizona Cardinals fan, was cheering loudly as his team held the lead late in the game. But the Pittsburgh Steelers scored the winning touchdown in the last few seconds, and Jones went home disappointed that his team had lost.
Not this time.
"The crowd just went nuts," Dave Van Schuyver said of the last few seconds of the championship game.
"It's something they'll remember forever," he said of the Kansas team.
Ditto for their families and friends, who wore "Storm Watcher" shirts all week in support of their athletes.
"You couldn't have asked for more," Van Schuyver said. "A storybook ending."