Family ranks high for Mid-Prairie basketball

By Paul D. Bowker
Posted 3/9/22

Mid-Prairie’s road to the state basketball tournament really began years ago.

It began in the family driveways and in the back yards and at the weekend youth basketball games and so many …

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Family ranks high for Mid-Prairie basketball

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Mid-Prairie’s road to the state basketball tournament really began years ago.

It began in the family driveways and in the back yards and at the weekend youth basketball games and so many other places.

Justice Jones, a sixth player off the bench for Mid-Prairie’s conference champion boys basketball team, certainly remembers. The Jones family and the Pennington family, the kids all first cousins and all Golden Hawks.

Justice’s mom, Jessica, is the sister of senior guard Jack Pennington’s mom, Emily.

“We’ve been competing, basketball with each other, football with each other, out in the yard for years,” Justice said.

They’d all be out there. Justice, his younger sister Amara, a junior sharp-shooting point guard for Mid-Prairie’s girls basketball team, and his older sister, Kessa, a 2019 Mid-Prairie graduate who played basketball and ran cross country and track. Joining them would be Jack Pennington, his younger sister Nora, a starter as a sophomore this season for the Mid-Prairie girls, and his younger brother, Bo, who is already a four-sport athlete and videos the Golden Hawks basketball games.

And let’s not forget the parents, Jessica and Kurt Jones, and Emily and Marc Pennington, who would be out there with them.

Who knew that all of those family get-togethers would lead to a state tournament run for the Mid-Prairie boys in 2022 and a substate tournament run for the girls in the same year?

“We’ve said many, many times how lucky we are to have all of our kids part of the basketball programs this winter,” Marc Pennington said. “Then to have our cousins (the Joneses) on the teams, too, is really special.

“The kids are all just so competitive. Whether we are playing cards, pickleball in the driveway or other made up games in the yard, it’s always been the six of them versus parents. If the cousins didn’t win, they wouldn’t speak to us!”

So, this really was a case of trying to keep up with the Joneses.

I can relate. And perhaps all of us can. Remember your childhood? The hoops games in the driveway or the touch football games in the street or the horseshoe pits in the back yard? Believe me, there was no bigger game than the Meadow Lane ice hockey championship in the Bowker’s back yard rink in suburban Boston. One year, my dad left it with a broken wrist. No matter. We won.

But in this memorable year of Mid-Prairie basketball, the Penningtons and the Joneses are not alone. The Golden Hawk basketball family has six sets of siblings: Adding to the portrait are Carter Harmsen, a senior forward who ranks among the top scorers in the state, and his sister Ashley, a sophomore on the girls team; Ethan Kos, the Golden Hawks senior center, and his brother Landon, a freshman on the JV squad; Maddie and Maya Nonnenmann, sisters who played key roles on the girls basketball and volleyball teams; and sisters Madison and Annette Witthoft, a sophomore and freshman, respectively, on the Golden Hawk girls team.

Up in the stands, every game, there the parents all sat: Jessica and Kurt Jones, Emily and Marc Pennington, Nicole and Chris Harmsen, Jen and Matt Nonnenmann, Jen and Anthony Kos, and Lori and Brandon Witthoft. They cheered. And they teared up on both the night that the Golden Hawk girls lost a substate championship and the night that the boys won a substate title.

“A couple of them were in tears after the game against Northeast [in the boys substate championship],” Justice Jones said. “It was just nice to see how excited they were for us.”

If there is one person who is touched by all this family, it’s Golden Hawks boys head coach Daren Lambert. He grew up in Dennison, a small city in western Iowa. He wound up coaching in Raytown, Missouri, a city of 30,000 in the suburbs of Kansas City, but Mid-Prairie’s small-town feel was a better fit. He can still walk out to a hallway near the Golden Hawks locker room and see photos of Ethan Kos’ uncles attached to the wall.

“When we lived in the big city, that’s the thing I was missing the most,” Lambert said. “I grew up in a small town in western Iowa. It was cool being in the big city, but this is definitely something you miss because it’s tight knit, it’s close, it’s a family feel. If you need something or they need something, everyone’s got each other’s backs.”

And that’s exactly the way it was Tuesday at Wells Fargo Arena in Des Moines. The big city. The big arena. And in a corner of that arena, you’d find all these people, wearing Golden Hawk shirts, cheering on family.

What could be better?

“It’s nice to know we’ve always got someone up in the stands,” Justice Jones said.

News columnist Paul Bowker can be reached at bowkerpaul1@gmail.com. Follow him on Twitter: @bowkerpaul.

Mid-Prairie, basketball, Nonnenmann, Amara Jones, Justice Jones, Carter Harmsen, Bowker