Lawrence High senior Jackson Mallory runs over to the Lions' student section to celebrate LHS' 41-36 win over Blue Valley North in the semifinals of the Class 6A state tournament on Friday at Wichita State's Charles Koch Arena. Mallory scored 12 points.

Emporia State wanted the three-sport standout from Wellington to light up scoreboards and stopwatches for the Hornets a half-century and four years ago.

One problem with that scenario: Leonard Scheufler didn’t care for the school’s black-and-gold color scheme, so he went elsewhere.

It wasn’t until Scheufler arrived at Ottawa University, from which he graduated in 1967, that he found out the Braves also wore black and gold uniforms. Too late to do anything about it, Scheufler stayed at Ottawa and turned his career as a football, basketball and track standout into a spot in The Braves Athletic Hall of Fame.

His daughter Kristin Scheufler Mallory, a 1993 graduate of Ottawa, earned a spot in the school’s Hall of Fame as well after a stellar four-year career as a basketball player. With Kristin’s 2007 induction, they became the first father-daughter tandem elected into the Braves Hall of Fame.

Kristin Scheufler brings the ball up the court for Ottawa University. (Contributed photo).

Kristin Mallory coached the Lawrence High girls basketball team to the 6A state championship in 2007-08 and stepped down a year after that so that she could attend more of her and husband Mike’s children’s games.

Jackson Mallory, the couple’s oldest child, started for the LHS boys team that finished second in 6A.

Doane University recruited Jackson to join the basketball program and he said he loved the “beautiful campus” during his visit. In the end, he decided not to go to the school located in Crete, Nebraska, and it had nothing to do with the school colors (black and orange).

It had everything to do with wanting to play for a coach he has known for much of his life and maybe a little to do with maintaining a family tradition.

Mallory signed with Ottawa University, where he will try to develop his game in a way that could extend the Hall of Fame recognition another generation.

He will play for head coach Aaron Siebenthall, boys basketball assistant coach at Lawrence High when Kristin was coaching the girls team and for the past few years Jackson’s shooting coach.

“He’s always been a mentor and we’ve known each other for quite a long time,” Jackson said of Siebenthall.

Jackson said he likes that idea of looking into the stands and seeing his grandfather, knowing how much he loves his alma mater.

“He’s kind of a big-timer there and I was a small-timer,” Kristin said. “I knew he had coached and taught before I was born and then once they had two children he couldn’t make it on a teacher’s salary, so he started working on the railroad and people around town still called him coach Scheufler.”

It wasn’t until she went away to college that she heard tales of her father’s All-American feats at Ottawa.

Leonard Scheufler in his Ottawa University football uniform. (Contributed photo).

“The first week of class when the teacher would say your name and you’d say, ‘Here,’ the faculty would say, ‘Was Leonard your dad? Then they’d tell stories about him,'” she said. “I remember going home on my first break asking my mom about it and she pulled out some big books. There was one big article about him and how he claimed that growing up on milking cows on a dairy farm gave him good hands for catching a football.”

The daughter’s feats didn’t quite match those of the father, but her Hall of Fame status suggests she was more than a “small-timer,” and her parents couldn’t have treated her more like a big-timer.

Leonard said his late wife, Beverly, Kristin’s mom, missed just three of her games “from seventh grade on,” and he caught most of them.

Leonard and Beverly even looked into flying to Colorado to see a playoff game during Kristin’s senior year, a huge accomplishment for an Ottawa women’s basketball program that had been in bad shape.

“It would have cost $850 for each ticket,” Scheufler remembered. A blizzard crossed driving off the list of options, so the Scheuflers settled for listening to a radio broadcast of the game through a telephone. Kristin’s then boyfriend and current husband, Mike Mallory, put the phone down next to the radio and hung up at the end of the first half, and they repeated the drill for the second half.

“A $27 phone bill,” Leonard said.

Times have changed since the days of long-distance charges, but one thing hasn’t: Ottawa University remains near and dear to Scheufler’s heart, his passion for it growing with each generation.