Settles, Edwards reflect on past

WINFIELD — One would find it hard not to get a little nostalgic from the 2021-22 Winfield-Mount Union boys’ basketball season.

This year’s Wolves team went 21-3 in an ultra-competitive year in Southeast Iowa, and although they didn’t make it up to this week’s state tournament, it may have started to feel like old times inside the gym in Winfield.

If not for the success of a growing basketball squad, maybe that nostalgia comes from the familiar faces. One in particular leads the team into battle every game night.

Klay Edwards is no stranger to successful basketball. He, along with longtime friend Jess Settles, helped kick start a dominant stretch of WMU basketball, that saw the school reach the state tournament an incredible five years in a row, getting at least to the semifinals every single time.

As the 2021-22 substate basketball tournaments wound down, Edwards and Settles rekindled some old memories in an interview with The Union, as well as the “Round Guy Podcast”’ which covers news and sports in Southeast Iowa.

“It was like a dream come true,” said Settles, who would go on to coach at Iowa Wesleyan and then become an analyst and commentator with the Big Ten Network. “We'd get to the gym and get off the bus to go to the game, and there would be a line 100 yards long before the JV game.”

After a couple of years of rising through the ranks in Southeast Iowa, the Wolves would finally make it back to state in 1992, when Settles was a junior and Edwards was a sophomore. That year, WMU would snap a 38-year state tournament drought.

“We were in Muscatine,” Settles recalled. “The athletic director let us bring a latter down and cut down the nets. We felt like we were in the NCAA tournament.”

WMU would make the state championship that year, before getting knocked out of the semifinals during the next two.

The Wolves dazzled crowds not just with how much they won by, but how they looked on the court. At its peak, WMU had four players who would make All-State. Settles made it three times, Edwards and 1996 grad Burt Lappe twice, and 1995 graduate and current Mt. Pleasant coach Eric Rawson made it once.

Physically, it was hard to match up with the Wolves, who sported incredible athleticism and intimidating height. Edwards himself stood 6’9. As one could imagine, games at WMU were played above the rim.

Settles remembers throwing fast-break alley-oops to his teammates and watching incredible dunks, some of which were unheard of in the high school ranks.

“It was just surreal,” Settles said. “It was like, ”This doesn't happen. No one else can do this.'”

On the day before games, the Wolves’ varsity team would wrap up practice with a dunk contest. Fans of the opposing team that came to watch the junior varsity game one night prior would get to see a preview of the show 24 hours before the varsity game took place.

“Sometimes you can win the Friday night game just by doing that stuff on a Thursday night,” said Edwards. “Half those kids are varsity kids too, and when they watch that, they don't want any part of it.”

And with that kind of talent, one could imagine what a typical early ‘90s WMU crowd was like when the varsity game tipped off.

“You had people just leaning against the walls,” Edwards said. “There wasn't any room in the bleachers.”

Settles recalled the raucous crowd on game nights coming to watch a team that typically blew out its local opponents.

“We'd be up big,” Settles recalled. “There would be 15 kids sliding behind the bench and we would be signing their jerseys and their shirts during the game. Coach (Mike) Koelker would let it happen, because they just wanted the next group of kids to experience it.”

Settles and Edwards both wound up in the Iowa High School Basketball Hall of Fame. Their younger teammates would be able to experience the school’s lone state basketball championship in 1995, when Settles and Edwards were both in college.

At the next level, the two would find themselves going head-to-head instead of playing side-to-side. Both found great success, with Settles playing at the University of Iowa, and Edwards playing for Iowa State.

“Every year that we would match up, we would get a lot of media attention, with high school teammates going up against each other, especially coming out of Iowa,” Edwards said. “I don't know if that had ever happened before.”

With Edwards on the bench for WMU and the team finding renewed success, Settles says he still keeps up with how the Wolves are doing, crediting social media with keeping him up to date. He has an extra rooting interest with Edwards’ children, Abram and Jake, playing on this year’s squad.

And as the 2022 state basketball tournament wraps up in Des Moines, Settles says watching highlights of the current crop of Wolves felt like a familiar sight.

“Someone posted a video about a month ago of (Abram) and (Cam) Buffington dunking the ball,” Settles said. “I was blown away at the level of above the rim play. It reminded me of when we were kids.”