He might be back in La Plata County, but he'll never, never leave Wichita, Kansas.
He has no choice.
A First Team All-Kansas Collegiate Athletic Conference selection, and later an NAIA All-America Scholar-Athlete his senior year at that city's Friends University, Bayfield High School graduate and current BHS Baseball head coach Jon Qualls was inducted into the Falcons' Athletic Hall of Fame last Saturday.
He's ready to start his third year as BHS head coach this spring.
Along with a former women's soccer standout and a former football standout, Qualls was one of three former student-athletes honored between the women's and men's basketball victories over McPherson College of Kansas inside FU's Garvey Physical Education Center.
"It was a great weekend," Qualls said Wednesday afternoon, "and I got to see a lot of the old guys I played with."
"A lot of 'em still live out there, so we got to reminisce about the 'glory days.' It was a lot of fun."
In 2004, he was a second Tteam All-KCAC selection as a relief pitcher, but in '05 went 12-2 with a 3.14 ERA and completed seven of 13 starts on the mound. After earning co-MVP at the National Baseball Congress World Series (held, fittingly, in Wichita) in 2006, the independent minor Frontier League announced on Dec. 1 of that year that Qualls had agreed to a deal with its Southern Illinois Miners for their expansion-year 2007 slate.
Which was a big deal to the town of Marion, Ill.; pro ball at any level had been absent there since the departure of the Class D, Illinois State League's Indians for Paducah, Ky., after the 1948 season, and fans came out in full force for the new crew.
Despite finishing sixth in the FL with a 49-47 record, the Miners set a new circuit attendance record in '07 by hosting 259,392 fans-bettering the previous mark by nearly 42,000-and became the first Frontier team to ever draw at least 5,000 per game (they averaged 5,086) for a campaign.
Ironically, Qualls almost missed most of that; he'd actually retired from the team on May 21, 2007-it was officially announced by the league on June 10-but was then reinstated on June 26. He would finish the season having appeared in 23 contests, starting six and finishing eight others, on the hill and posted a 3-3 record.
He registered a 5.65 ERA in 71-2/3 innings of work, but also built himself a 37:11 strikeout-to-walk ratio to keep hitters honest. Unfortunately Qualls, exclusively a pitcher, had no at-bats himself before his final exit.
The Miners improved to 58-38 overall the next year and finished third to reach the club's first postseason, but Qualls-who'd graduated Friends in '06 with a B.S. in Human Biology-was already on his way towards earning his Doctorate of Chiropractic (he got it in 2010) from Portland, Ore.-based University of Western States.
Qualls will start his latest Wolverine spring having gone 34-9 overall, 15-1 in the 3A Intermountain League since taking over for Tom Horton as the varsity's skipper. And accompanying him on his brief return pilgrimage to the Sunflower State were current BHS seniors Kelton McCoy (C/P/1B) and Taed Heydinger (P/OF).
"Brought them out there to work out for a couple colleges," said Qualls. "And hopefully something comes of it, but if it doesn't I still hope they got something out of the experience!"
DID YOU KNOW: Signed March 29, 2007, one of Qualls' short-time teammates (at least on paper) with Southern Illinois was Danny Almonte, once a pitcher of Little League World Series infamy-he was too old to have helped the Rolando Paulino All-Stars take third in the 2001 LLWS-and most recently an assistant coach at Cardinal Hayes High School in New York City's Bronx borough.
Playing for the Miners negated his college eligibility, and thus a chance to have played with Hobbs, New Mexico-based N.M. Junior College in the 2007 NJCAA Division I National Championship in Grand Junction, Colo.
DYNAMIC DELEGATE: Following the Miners' maiden season, the team's logo-a hard hat and headlamp-wearing, bearded, burly fellow wielding a pickax/baseball bat-was voted the minors' finest (over the Wichita Wingnuts' Spinner the Squirrel) after a poll taken by cable business news channel CNBC ending in early April '08.
The mascot/miner's name? 'Big John.'
