In many ways, Ethan Noll’s senior basketball season at Jefferson County North didn’t end exactly how he wanted it to.
 
The Charger boys saw their hopes of capturing the program’s first-ever state basketball championship end somewhat abruptly in Dodge City when North was bounced in the Class 2A state quarterfinals 55-37 by eventual state champion Moundridge.
 
But despite coming home without a state title or even North’s first state-tournament victory, in all honesty, Noll’s basketball season did end exactly how he had hoped. In the sense that he overcame some pretty long odds to even be on the court with his teammates making history for a second straight athletic season, trying to achieve that dream of becoming state champions.
 
“I wasn’t sure I was going to play at all this year,” Noll said. “All I wanted was to be out there on the court with my teammates. That was my whole goal for the season.”
 
For anyone who knows Noll – this week’s CapFed® True Blue ® Student of the Week – when the Charger senior sets a goal, it usually comes to fruition.
 
“Ethan has an outstanding work ethic and perseverance,” Jefferson County North football coach Jeff Schneider said. “He’s got great leadership ability and has determined drive to succeed in everything he does.”
 

 
Going into high school the goal Noll had in mind was one most any athlete shares as they embark on their prep career. He and his senior teammates – a large, tight-knit and talented class – wanted to leave their marks in Jefferson County North history. Naturally a state championship was the ultimate goal, but taking their respective programs to new heights was at the top of the list.
 
Particularly in football where the Chargers had a strong core of 11 players that formed this year’s senior class.
 
“Coming in, we were coming off a pretty good eighth grade year and we wanted to do something no other class had done,” Noll said. “Our sophomore year, we reached the sectional round where we lost to Olpe and that’s the farthest any JCN team had ever been. After that, it motivated us to know we could do more.”
 
This season, the Chargers attained their goal of becoming the best team in program history. North not only got past the Class 1A sectional round for the first time with a 52-0 rout of Olpe, the Chargers followed with a 20-13 upset of No. 1 St. Mary’s Colgan in the semifinals to reach the state championship game for the first time ever.
 
Though the bid for a state championship came up short as the Chargers fell 35-6 to Conway Springs in the title game, it was the run of a lifetime.
 
“When we did that this year, it was awesome – every kid’s dream to keep playing week after week and making it all the way to the state championship game,” Noll said.
 
As arduous of a road as it was for the Chargers to travel, it was even more so for Noll, who starred at both tailback and linebacker. Midway through the season, he began battling tendinosis in his left knee – a condition that first flared up on him during his freshman basketball season.
 
A chronic condition characterized by the degeneration of collagen in the tendons, Noll spent part of his sophomore year doing physical therapy on the knee after also having surgery for a torn labrum in his right shoulder. But the pain never really went away and by the mid-point of his senior football season, it had become constant.
 
“The thought in the back of your head that it was always there,” Noll said of the pain. “It was a pretty stressful time because the pain was pretty bad. I was very limited in practices. There was the thought I wouldn’t be able to finish football season, but there wasn’t any way I wasn’t going to push through for the guys.”
 
His routing by the end of the season was to rest the knee throughout the week with ice, stretches in ibuprofen before playing on Friday nights. He made it through the season, finishing with 887 yards and 18 touchdowns rushing – including North’s only touchdown in the championship game – as well as a team-leading 392 yards receiving and team-high 88 tackles.
 
The lengthy season led to a quick turnaround for the upcoming basketball season and when it came time to join his teammates on the basketball court, Noll simply couldn’t.
 
“The first practice after three days of break there was no way I could do anything,” he said. “I couldn’t cut, I couldn’t really run. It was pretty bad. That was when the nerves set in on if I was going to make it back for the season.”
 
Noll didn’t give up on his desire to play his senior season, however. He spent the first two months of the season doing physical therapy and resting the knee to allow the tendinosis to subside as much as possible. Yet even though he couldn’t be on the court, Noll was still very much involved with the program.
 
“I was pretty good at being the player-coach,” said Noll, who suited up for all the games, but didn’t play in December or January. “If something would go wrong on the court and the coaches weren’t quite getting through to the guys, I tried to go a different route with it. I’d talk to the guys one on one, keeping them positive because if you get down on yourself, it only makes it worse. It was a pretty big role for me to still be a leader for them.”
 
Charger head coach Cory Noll said that involvement just speaks to what kind of leader Ethan is.
 
“He just loves competing, but at the end of the football year, he could barely walk on it at times,” said Cory Noll, who is a distant relative of Ethan’s. “You could tell internally it killed him seeing his teammates out there and competing in basketball games and he felt hopeless a little bit. … But through it all, he was a great teammate and was always there motivating his teammates.
 
“He’s a kid that you love to coach. I can’t say enough good things about him. He came to work every day and at practice I would ask him, ‘How you feeling?’ And his ‘I’m OK’ means on another kid it might be a Level 10 pain. When you see him doing what it takes to get up and down the court, it makes everybody else work a little harder because he has an excuse not to do something, but he’s out there giving it all he has. His leadership whether he was playing or on the bench contributed a lot to the success we had this year.”
 
North got off to a strong start without Noll on the court, following an 0-2 start with six straight wins in December and early January. But then the Chargers hit a bit of a lull, going 2-4 in a six-game stretch leading into February.
 
With his regimen showing improvement in how his knee felt, Noll knew he had to get back on the court.
 
“Halfway through, I knew I was going to be back the rest of the season no matter what,” Noll said. “We kind of went through a rough patch in the middle of the season and I was like, ‘They need me and I need to be out there for them.’ We’re all so close and it killed me not to be out there with them.”
 
Noll returned to game action on Feb. 6 against Horton – a Class 2A state tournament qualifier in 2023 – and helped the Charger avenge an early-season loss with a 46-42 win. North proceeded to win five of six to close the regular season, earning the No. 4 seed in the Class 2A sub-state the Chargers hosted.
 
After opening the postseason with a 51-38 win over Cair Paravel, North upset Northeast Kansas League champion Maur Hill-Mt. Academy 51-37 in the semifinals, avenging two regular-season losses to the Ravens. The Chargers rode the momentum of that victory to a 58-52 win over Horton in the sub-state finals, clinching the program’s first state-tournament berth since 2013 and just the fourth in program history.
 
“It was awesome,” said Noll, who wound up averaging just over 6 points per game in his brief season. “My entire career we’d never even made it to the sub-state championship game, let alone get to the state tournament. So that was a big thing for us. We knew we were that good in football there’s no reason we couldn’t do it on the basketball court, too. That was definitely a motivator for us, doing something no other class had done and then carrying it over to another sport. The feeling was one in a million, winning sub-state and then getting to play at state in that big arena in Dodge (City). It was crazy.”
 
The accomplishment was particularly satisfying for Noll, knowing what he had gone through to fully experience the journey with his teammates.
 
“If I set a goal, I’m pretty much going to do everything I can to achieve it,” he said. “That definitely comes from my dad. He’s always pushing me to be the best version of me I can be and that’s how I look at things. When I set a goal, I’m always pushing towards it.
 
“I think it comes naturally to me.”
 
Noll also credits role models he had during his early seasons at North, including former football teammates Landon Gutschenritter and Carson and Caleb Worthington.
 
“They were great at being leaders for everyone and that set the tone for what I needed to be to help the younger guys come up and be the guy they can learn from,” Noll said. “It’s awesome to be able to connect to all the guys and to think that I can help them become better and get to where we are, it’s just a great feeling.”
 
Cory Noll said Ethan truly embraced being a leader and mentor to his teammates, young and old.
 
“He was one that any time someone needed a ride to weightlifting or summer workouts, whoever needed it, he’d do it,” Cory said. “He’d bring kids to football camps, basketball camps, whatever it was. He made sure guys got there and contributed to that success. He’s everything you could ask for and he’s the epitome of the student-athlete and someone you want to have in your program and in your school.”
 
Noll doesn’t just apply that mindset to his athletic pursuits. He’s also flourished within the halls of Jefferson County North high school, where his leadership qualities have played out as well.
 
Noll is the vice president of North’s National Honors Society and also serves as the Student Body President for Student Council.
 
As important as success in the athletic arena has been to him, so has thriving in the academic world.
 
“It’s just kind of who I am,” he said. “It’s very important and that comes from my family. You can succeed outside of the classroom, but you’re a student before an athlete. That always kind of came first. 
 
“I was very athletic in middle school, but my family always taught me to stay humble and that always stuck with me. We had great leadership when I was a freshman all the way through and it was natural for me to just follow their lead. I’ve never been one to be mean to anyone. I may not be the most talkative, but it’s what I do by example that makes me a leader.”

“As far as how he interacts at school and gets along with his peers, Ethan is a very low-key, friendly kid who is a tremendous leader at this school,” Jefferson County North principal Joe Worthington said. “He takes leadership roles at this school and one of the tasks he gets to do daily is give our daily announcements to the kids. So he’s kind of the voice of JCN, is what I jokingly call him. But he’s a dedicated academic student who basically excels in academics.
 
“He’s an all-around kid.”
 
His willingness to be involved also has led him down a path he never anticipated. When Jefferson County North started its Future Farmers of America club last year, Noll decided to give it a try.
 
Mind you, he admitted he really had no agricultural background to draw from. But the club intrigued him and with several of his teammates getting involved, he decided to as well.
 
And now, it’s something he’s really embraced as well. He and fellow senior Grady Noll, finished third place at the FFA’s Land Judging competition.
 
“It opened my eyes that there are so many different things to do in the ag field,” Noll said. “When we first got it, I was like, ‘OK, here’s ag and I’m not really into that.’ Obviously we live in a very rural area, but we don’t own a farm or do much ag stuff. But once I got enrolled in it, it just opened my eyes to all these different things out there and now I’m thinking about doing something ag related in the future.”
 
Noll hasn’t given up on hopes of playing football in college. Or finishing off his senior year at North doubling up in the spring running track and playing for the Chargers’ baseball team.
 
It was a quick turnaround once again from a late basketball run to the start of the spring season, but Noll is managing his knee as best he can to make it through the spring season competing for both programs.
 
“It’s been sore but I haven’t been pushing it too hard to let it heal,” he said. “But I’m still working on what I need to do to stay ready for the season.”