HUTCHINSON – It wasn’t necessarily a secret that Cooper Carr had held onto for the entirety of Baldwin’s 2025-26 basketball season.
 
But it was a feeling he had never shared with one of his fellow seniors, close friend Devyn Wadel. And it stemmed from a moment they shared in the gym during the offseason.
 
“I remember working in the gym this summer and it’s just me and him,” Carr said. “We’re going back and forth on the shooting machine and he’s competing with me. That’s when I knew we had something special.”
 
And boy did Wadel pick the perfect time to reveal that to the rest of state.
 
Taking on undefeated and season-long No. 1 Rock Creek in Saturday’s Class 4A state championship game at the Hutchinson Sports Arena, Wadel took his place beside standout senior teammates Carr and Leo Schoenberger in becoming Baldwin legends. The senior guard scored a career-high 17 points on 5-of-7 shooting from 3-point range to help Baldwin capture the first state championship in program history as the Bulldogs upset Rock Creek 66-60.
 
“I just could have never dreamed of this,” Wadel said. “I was just feeling good all night, I can’t say anything else about it. Sometimes I’m on and sometimes I’m off. Today I was on for sure.”
 

 
In capturing the program’s first-ever state title, Baldwin had a tough of a road as it could possibly navigate, having to go through the top three seeds in the Class 4A state tournament.
 
The trek began with a 50-48 victory over No. 3 Pratt in the quarterfinals in which the Bulldogs surrendered every bit of a 15-point halftime lead on the Greenbacks before pulling out a 50-48 victory. Following a 65-45 semifinal blowout of previously undefeated Atchison, Baldwin picked off its second straight unbeaten, storming back from nine points down to start the fourth quarter to upset Rock Creek for the title.
 
It was a magical and perhaps inexplicable run after the Bulldogs had to rally from 15 points down in its sub-state championship game with Paola just to get back into the state tournament for the fourth straight year.
 
“Walking in, even into the tournament as a six seed, it’s just unbelievable,” Baldwin coach Don Blanchat said. “Tournament time in March basketball. If you’re playing your best, you’re going to win three or four games in a row and we’re playing our best right now. It was good to peak tonight.”
 
While the run may have been a bit inexplicable, Baldwin’s run of success over the past four years isn’t in Blanchat’s mind. When this year’s senior class – eight of them on the state championship team roster – hit high school, Blanchat knew he had something special on his hands.
 
And it went well beyond Carr, who has his name etched all over the Baldwin school record books including as its all-time leading scorer, and fellow standout Leo Schoenberger, who was the Bulldogs’ leading scorer this season.
 
“Not only did they have Cooper and Leo, but they had that third, fourth and fifth guy who were invested,” Blanchat said. “Showing up in the summer and in the offseason, staying after practice and shooting, whatever it was. You could tell they had a little more invested as a group.
 
“And the other thing with that is these guys are super-close friends. They hang out every weekend and they’ve got a YouTube channel. What they built off the court was so good for us on the court.”
 

 
Call Wadel’s championship game performance a by-product of that investment. While Carr became and immediate starter for the program as a freshman and Schoenberger and Colton Collum took on starting roles as sophomores, Wadel spent much of his first two seasons on the sub-varsity teams, seeing only scant varsity minutes even as a junior.
 
And he admitted, at times, he wasn’t sure he’d ever have an impact.
 
“Throughout high school I saw that all my friends are good and I wanted to get in the gym with them because this is my passion,” he said. “I would go home and cry because I thought I didn’t have it.”
 
But he stuck with it and Baldwin can be glad he did.
 
After Rock Creek finished the first quarter of Saturday’s championship game on an 8-0 run to take a 15-6 lead, Wadel began his coming out party. With Baldwin down 10 early in the second period, Wadel hit back-to-back 3-pointers in the span of 21 seconds.
 
That ignited a quarter that saw Baldwin outscore the Mustangs 18-8 with Wadel giving the Bulldogs a 24-23 lead with a 3-pointer in the final seconds of the half. He went 3 of 4 from beyond the arc in the quarter, matching his career high for 3-pointers made in a game this season.
 
“We have two of the best players in 4A,” Wadel said of Carr and Schoenberger. “It just opens the floor up so much for the rest of us. In practice, we tape Xs on the floor so we have the right spacing and it worked out today. They were crashing so I’d find my spot and shoot.”
 
In a game that featured massive pendulum swings of momentum, Rock Creek rebounded from its second-quarter swoon with a huge third quarter. After hitting just 2 of 8 shots and 1 of 7 3-pointers in the second period, the Mustangs simply couldn’t miss in the third quarter, going 7 of 9 from the field and 3 of 4 from deep.
 
Hudson Edelman, who scored 14 points and hit and three 3-pointers off the bench in the semifinals, connected on a pair of 3-pointers in the period. None were bigger than the one with 22 seconds left in the quarter that not only answered a 3-pointer by Carr moments earlier, but put the Mustangs up nine going into the fourth.
 
At that point, all the momentum was with the Mustangs.
 
“That’s just been our year, to be honest,” Carr said of having to overcome that deficit. “I mean we started 0-2. I don’t know how many teams have won a ’ship starting 0-2. We’ve just battled and our motto was being a sled dog. We all have our own skills and we each bring something to the table and collectively it works. The guys have bought into that and that’s how we won this state championship.”
 

 
The game pendulum had another big swing in it as Baldwin began the fourth quarter with an 11-2 run to tie the game 50-50 on a steal and layup by Carr moments after Kreyton Frost had buried a 3-pointer -- his only basket of the game. Rock Creek grabbed the lead right back, but Wadel connected on his fourth 3-pointer of the night to put Baldwin back up one.
 
After ties at 57 and 58, Wadel delivered his signature moment. With 40 seconds left, he took a feed form Carr on the wing and buried his fifth 3-pointer of the night for what became the game-winner. After Rock Creek’s Logan Klingenberg missed a game-tying 3-pointer with 29 seconds to play, Schoenberger and Carr combined to make 5 of 6 free throws in the final 25 seconds to clinch Baldwin’s first-ever state title.
 
“The first quarter they came out and played great and we responded,” Blanchat said. “The same with the third and fourth. We didn’t start both those halves great, but the response was a veteran team, an experienced team that’s been in a lot of those games the last three weeks and was ready for another one.”
 
The loss ended Rock Creek’s bid to win the first state championship in program history as well as a bid for an undefeated season as the Mustangs finished 27-1. Porter Gill led the Mustangs with 16 points and Ethan Tonsor added 15.
 

 
“They had kids make plays,” Rock Creek coach Justin Smith said. “They had a couple of kids hit threes that we wanted shooting it and they hit them. Kudos to them. I felt like we did some good things but we could just never put them away and when you have seniors who have played for four years, started for four years like they have, it’s hard to put them away. They continued to fight and we just didn’t do enough.”
 
Wadel’s previous career high had been 11 points, that coming in the sub-state semifinals against Coffeyville. He’d made three 3-pointers in a game three times previously, including the semifinals against Atchison.
 
“For them to put it on my in the biggest game of my high school career, to show what I could do, it’s an amazing feeling,” said Wadel, who had scored in double figures just once this season, against Coffeyville in the sub-state semifinals, before his breakout performance in the title game. “This is just crazy.”
 
But not so crazy in Carr’s mind.
 
“I’m going to tell you right now for any of those kids who think freshman year, they’re not getting any varsity, sophomore year they barely get any and they think they should give up or walk away – this guy,” Carr said. “I’m gonna cry but this man never gave up. His work is a testament to so many kids out there that if you do the little things and show up every day, you can accomplish anything.”
 
In a way, that’s true of Baldwin’s climb to its first state championship. Prior to Blanchat’s arrival six years ago, Baldwin was nowhere near the upper echelon of Class 4A.
 
Since posting an 18-4 record in 2013-14, the Bulldogs had endured eight straight losing seasons, including five seasons of three wins or fewer. Blanchat’s first team won just two games before making a six-win improvement in Year 2.
 
But the arrival of this year’s senior class brought immediate success as Baldwin went 18-5 and returned to state in 2022-23 and then followed it up with a 20-5 season the next year, placing fourth at the state tournament.
 
After finishing 18-5 and falling in the state quarterfinals last year, Baldwin made history this season.
 
“I’m going to tell you right now, it’s a testament to the coaching staff,” Carr said. “I came into a great program, but I know from watching when I was younger – I didn’t know it at the time – but the culture just wasn’t there. Coach Blanchat came in and my dad came alongside him and they had a vision and they started building it. That’s what all of us seniors walked into and we know nothing more than this program.”
 

 
CLASS 4A CHAMPIONSHIP GAME
 
BALDWIN 66, ROCK CREEK 60
 
Baldwin … 6 … 18 … 15 … 27 … -- … 66
Rock Creek … 15 … 8 … 25 … 12 … -- … 60
 
Baldwin (22-6) – Rood 0-0 0-0 0, Carr 5-11 2-4 13, Smasal 0-1 0-0 0, Schoenberger 6-9 7-10 19, Collum 5-7 0-0 10, Wadel 6-8 0-0 17, Wheeler 2-4 0-0 4, Frost 1-1 0-0 3. Totals 25-41 9-14 66.
 
Rock Creek (27-1) – Rosa 3-6 0-0 9, Martinie 1-3 4-4 7, Tonsor 4-6 7-8 15, Gill 6-10 2-3 16, Klingenberg 0-7 3-4 3, Brinson 0-0 2-2 2, Edelman 3-7 0-2 8, Pendell 0-0 0-0 0. Totals 17-39 18-23 60.
 
3-point goals – Baldwin 7-14 (Wadel 5-7, Carr 1-4, Frost 1-1, Smasel 0-1, Collum 0-1); Rock Creek 8-22 (Rosa 3-6, Edelman 2-5, Gill 2-5, Martinie 1-3, Tonsor 0-2, Klingenberg 0-1). Rebounds – Baldwin 21 (Collum 5); Rock Creek 20 (Klingenberg 7). Assists – Baldwin 19 (Carr 6); Rock Creek 10 (Martinie 4). Turnovers – Baldwin 13, Rock Creek 14. Total fouls -- Baldwin 21, Rock Creek 18. Fouled out – Baldwin: Wheeler; Rock Creek: Gill.