Dawson Fizer

🏆 Sports in Kansas 5A Coach of the Year Rod Stallbaumer, Basehor-Linwood A breakthrough more than a decade in the making finally arrived for Basehor-Linwood under head coach Rod Stallbaumer, who guided the Bobcats to a 12-1 season and their first ever trip to the 5A state title game. Though B-L fell to Salina Central in Emporia, the story of 2025 will be remembered not for how it ended, but for how this program finally kicked down the door it had been pounding on for years. Stallbaumer has built one of the most consistent winners in Kansas high school football. Since taking over in 2014, Basehor-Linwood has recorded 12 straight winning seasons, posted a 95-33 overall record, and averaged nearly eight wins per year, a level of stability few programs in 4A or 5A can claim. Yet the postseason wall remained. For a decade, the Bobcats ran into the Kansas City metro private-school gauntlet, Bishop Miege, St. James Academy, and St. Thomas Aquinas, without a single postseason victory against them. From 2014-2024, Basehor-Linwood went 0-10 against those three, getting outscored 462-122, including multiple playoff exits that felt like the same story every November. The wins, the respect, the consistency were there, but the breakthrough never came. Until 2025. In a program-defining moment, the Bobcats defeated St. James Academy 28-20, a victory that flipped the narrative and finally pierced the postseason ceiling. After years of trying, Basehor-Linwood broke through against one of the very teams that had kept them out. And they did it during a perfect 12-0 run to the title game. Basehor-Linwood didn’t just win in 2025, they became the version people always believed they could be. The version the community kept waiting for. The version Stallbaumer kept building toward. A season that changed perception. A wall shattered. A program elevated. A decade of consistency met its defining moment and Stallbaumer delivered it. #sportsinkansas