OLATHE — The Heart of America Athletic Conference recently released its 2010-11 all-conference men’s basketball team.
Former Great Bend resident Conner Langrehr, a freshman from NAIA Division-I MidAmerica Nazarene University, who graduated from Gardner-Edgerton High School in 2010, was selected as an honorable mention all-conference performer. Additionally and more impressively, Langrehr was selected as the conference’s Freshman of the Year.
Langrehr is the son of Jeff and Sherry Langrehr of Gardner. Conner’s father formerly was the head basketball coach at Great Bend for 15 seasons (1994-95 through 2008-09), leading the Panthers to back-to-back Class 5A state basketball championships in 2004-05 and 2005-06. The family moved to Gardner in the summer of 2010, where Conner again played under his father for Gardner-Edgerton his senior campaign.
A 6-foot-5 guard, Langrehr averaged 11.4 points per game overall and 13.9 points in league games this past season for the Pioneers, which ranked him 11th in the conference in scoring. In his final 15 games of the season, he scored in double figures in each game, averaging 17.9 points, including a 38-point outburst on the road at conference champion Evangel. He shot 48 percent from the field, 33 percent on 3-pointers and 70 percent from the free-throw line. He also ranked second on the team in assists.
MidAmerica Nazarene is coached by Rocky Lamar, whose assistant is Great Bend native Matt Keeley. Keeley recruited Conner to MNU, and is the second straight Pioneers player to win the newcomer award. The Pioneers finished fifth this season in the 11-team conference. The Pioneers started two freshmen and two sophomores, coupled with major contributions from a pair of junior. With this nucleus, the Pioneers plan to challenge for a league title and to qualify for the NAIA national tournament.