Topeka's Putthoff switching sports two years in to college
TOPEKA (KSNT) - Zander Putthoff was a regular on Friday night basketball highlights with Topeka West in high school.
However, he chose to pursue baseball in college.
"He had heard it from baseball coaches throughout the region that 6-[foot]-4 lefties are hard to find," Zander's dad, Darrin Puthoff, said. "They put a lot of stock in that for him and his future."
Putthoff, a 2022 graduate of T-West, says baseball was sort of always the plan. He spent summers on the diamond, not the court, in high school.
"We had a lot of time sewed into it," he said.
Putthoff went to Kansas City Kansas Community College for baseball, where he spent his freshman season and returned for year two in the fall of 2023. However, Zander made a stop by Washburn's Lee Arena for a basketball game when he was home for Thanksgiving. The atmosphere brought him back.
"Basketball is just deep down in my heart," Zander Putthoff told 27 News. "It's something you can't just get out. Even though I was away from it for two years, it was still there."
He asked his dad to talk late one night before going back to KC for school. Darrin, although being slightly nervous for what could be a challenging transition, fully understood.
"His passion has always been basketball," Darrin Putthoff said. "I've always told people, 'The kid might try to leave his passion but the passion will never leave the kid.' And that's what we saw with him: The passion, the love of the game. He grew up with me, in the gym, he's a gym rat. His love for basketball ended up kind of winning out."
Putthoff opted out of his sophomore season of baseball while Darrin, a longtime referee for Kansas high school basketball, got to work finding his son the next best opportunity.
"He has more connection than I know," Zander said of his dad. "It seems like everything we need he knows a guy. He was calling. Every school that I got set up with was him kind of being like my agent."
Those connections included not one but two Kansas coaching legends: Lon Kruger and Rick Bloomquist.
""Coach Kruger looked at [Zander's] tape and told me that catch and shoot kids are hard to find," Darrin said, recalling his conversation with the Silver Lake native and longtime Big 12 coach. "So he was pretty confident that we'd find a spot for Zander to play."
Zander and his dad both hit it off with Maverick Harris, the head coach at NAIA's Bethany College in Lindsborg, Kansas. More conversations and workouts led to the former Charger signing to join the Swedes for the 2024-25 season.
He's excited for the change and is already hitting workouts hard to try and get back into basketball shape after working as a 'pitcher-only' with KCK the last couple years. However, the change comes with at least one big 'I told you so.'
"He always told me I was going to switch [back to basketball]," Putthoff said of his high school coach, the legendary Rick Bloomquist. "Years ago, he told me 'Yeah, this isn't gonna last.'"
It's true.
"Well, yeah, I did… I told him, I said 'You'll be back. You're going to miss it.'" Bloomquist said, before later expressing his confidence in Putthoff's ability to make the challenging move. "He has the work ethic. His athletic IQ and his basketball IQ is really high. He's a student of the game. He's a student of an athlete. He knows what it takes."
He'll have high expectations from his high school coach and big shoes to fill. Bloomquist is a Bethany College product himself.
"So, he's got a lot of things to work on to follow in my foot steps," Bloomquist said with a laugh.