Jeremy Thomas was on the job in the Hershey Neb. school district Thursday, but his mind was in Kansas. All day, he was thinking he’d watch Wichita State play an evening game in the NCAA tournament, only to discover on arriving home the Shockers didn’t play until Friday.

Graduates of Southwestern Heights High School in Plains, Thomas and his wife, Carly, earned their undergraduate degrees at WSU. That’s more than enough to make him a school fan, but Thomas has even closer ties to the basketball team.

“I worked for the basketball team when I was in school,” he said. “My first year was under (Mark) Turgeon, and then with coach (Gregg) Marshall when he arrived.”

It was a desire to get back to his and his wife’s Kansas roots that prompted Thomas to successfully apply for the Eudora Middle School principal position that opened for next school year when Denise Kendall announced her pending resignation last fall.

“We have family in Wichita, Kansas City and Tulsa,” he said. “We had a two-year plan of coming to North Platte and then returning to Kansas. We’re now on year nine.”

Thomas is grateful for the delay and the professional development he received in the Hershey school district. He started there as a substitute and assistant boys basketball coach, became a regular classroom teacher and was then promoted to his current position of assistant principal of seventh- through 12th-grades and district activities director, he said. He also earned his master’s degree at Wayne State College. He is excited now about being able to focus solely on administration at the middle school.

“I love that age group,” he said. “They have a lot of energy and a lot of passion. I feel there are a lot of opportunities to impact them very quickly.”

With their small-town backgrounds, he and his wife were looking for a town like Eudora to make their new home with their daughters Shirey, 6, and Chazley, 2, Thomas said. They were also looking for a location his wife could pursue her five-year plan to earn her doctorate in speech pathology, he said.

His duties at Hershey ends May 31, and the family will be in Eudora in late June or early July to get acquainted with the community and its residents, Thomas said.

The Eudora school board also filled the position of assistant high school principal for the departing Megan Black. Joe Zlatnik, currently a social studies teacher at Basehor-Linwood High School and native of Rossville was hired for the position.

In a move that recalls the early 19th century, Joe Sample, his wife, Ashley, and four children will pack up in July and head down the Santa Fe Trail in search of new opportunities. The Baldwin Junior High School principal announced last week he has accepted a position as superintendent of the Larned school district. His last day with the Baldwin school district will be June 30.

Sample said the decision was a bittersweet one because of the friends and colleagues he will leave behind. Sample took over at BJHS in 2013 when he left a position as assistant principal in Iola High School. But that wasn’t the beginning with his association with the school district or Baldwin City. Sample earned his undergraduate and master’s degrees from Baker University. He was a part-time coach while in college and student taught in the district.

“This is the first time I’ve lived more than 45 minutes from my hometown of Garnett,” he said.

With a state superintendent license acquired, Sample researched several openings. The Larned position appealed to him for several reasons, he said.

Larned district voters recently passed a construction bond issue, and a new middle school the measure funded will open with the start of the 2017-2018 school year, Sample said. The district is about the same size as the Baldwin City and Garnett school districts. Having taught in the Gardner-Edgerton school district, Sample said he wanted his four children to have the opportunity to live and be educated in a community of similar size as Garnett and Baldwin City.

The Baldwin City school board will start discussion of finding Sample’s successor at Monday’s board meeting.