Becoming that third player to reach the 1,000-point threshold wasn’t necessarily a goal for senior Luke Appel this season, but as his numbers piled up throughout the season, that possibility became more and more likely.

“I just want to win, so I am going to do everything I can to win and I don’t really think about it that much,” Appel, this year’s Times-Republican Boys Basketball Player of the Year, said. “I just like to play so I do everything I have a chance to do to win a game.”

With only two games left on the regular season schedule, Appel was sitting at just under 960 points and wasn’t positive he was going to reach the elusive milestone. To make matters worse, a game against Southeast Polk for mid-February was cancelled, leaving one opportunity in the regular season and one guaranteed game in the postseason left to hit the 1,000-point mark.

“I knew when that game got cancelled it was going to be harder, but we got further in the postseason than we usually did so that helped,” Appel said.

T-R GRAPHIC

As he alluded to, the Bobcats would win their next two games, beating then-No. 3 Des Moines North in a wild finish at home off a basket by Appel in the final seconds, and then traveling to Urbandale and downing the J-Hawks in the first round of the postseason, the first playoff victory for Marshalltown in six years.

Appel was particularly special in those two wins, going for 26 points against the Polar Bears and then dropping 30 points in the win over Urbandale. So even though the Bobcats had moved on to face Des Moines Hoover in the next round, Appel had the 1,000-point metric already locked up, reaching it against the J-Hawks.

“We didn’t talk to him about it much because we didn’t want to add to the pressure, but we were aware of how close he was,” Appel’s mother, Donna, said.

After scoring 23 points in the final game of the season, a 48-44 loss to Hoover in the substate semifinals, Appel finished his illustrious career with the Bobcats with 1,036 total points, the third-best mark ever in MHS boys basketball history.

Marshalltown finished 8-14, its best record since 2011, and Appel had 483 total points, good enough for 22 points per game, the sixth-most in Class 4A. He also had 10.1 rebounds per game, which was third in 4A.

“I really tried to prove that I can play with the best of them and really just wanted to leave a mark on Bobcat basketball. I played my hardest every game,” he said.

The winning started for Appel before the basketball season, when he and the Marshalltown boys golf team won a team state title for the first time in over a decade. Appel said what he was able to take from that experience playing on the best golf team in the state was that culture of expecting to win.

“Winning in golf all the time was a mindset of we were going to win every time we go out there. For basketball I was trying to bring that mindset to all of the players,” he said. “A lot of them were football players and they only won one game, so we were just trying to bring that mindset that we can play with anyone and try to win games. Play as hard as we can every game.”

When it came to play on the court this year, Appel had to make a change as well. For the previous three years, he had been primarily a wing player, but the 6-foot-7 senior did most of his damage on the post this season. He said what led to that change of style wasn’t so much what he was doing on the court, but what brother Michael Appel was doing as assistant coach under Scott Smith.

“That was mostly my brother getting more plays for me and teaching the other guys how to pass the ball down there,” he said. “Just more organized in everything, and I guess it was an easy transfer for me because when I was younger I used to always play down there too.”

The Appel family is entrenched in Bobcat sports, as father Jerry and mother Donna have both coached in Marshalltown and are fervent supporters of the blue and red. Michael played on the teams in the mid- to late-2000s that were regulars in the state tournament, and of course he was an assistant coach this year.

With all of those MHS ties, Luke said this season was even more special and he wanted to make it one to remember.

“Being a Bobcat growing up, going to all the practices and seeing how things were done, I wanted to bring the pride back to Marshalltown and just have a winning culture,” he said.

There was no denying that a lot of excitement surrounded this team all season. In that final road game against the Huskies, the Bobcat fans easily outnumbered the Hoover faithful, much to the surprise of Appel and the rest of the team.

“Seeing all the people that came to Des Moines Hoover, we haven’t had that many people at an away game in a long time,” he said. “There were a lot of kids there, hopefully they see that and want to be good too.”

It was as a kid that Appel said he first learned of the game he loves, watching practice for Marshalltown while his dad was an assistant coach.

“That’s where I basically was introduced, just messing around and picking up the game from there,” he said. “Then we had an AAU team when we were all younger that basically started with my dad and coach [Todd Kluver]. We played with that team until the end of seventh grade, so that’s where we all learned a lot.”

The next step was a stronger AAU team, this time with the Iowa Wolves Basketball Academy out of Huxley.

“AAU is when it hit me that I really wasn’t that good. When I first went into AAU, you really run into some good players there,” Appel said. “A few years there playing with the Wolves was a fun team, met some good guys from small towns and you really bond with people through basketball.”

Through playing with the Wolves, Appel got to face off against the likes of Joe Wieskamp, the 2018 Mr. Iowa Basketball out of Muscatine, and A.J. Green, the leading scorer for 4A state champs Cedar Falls. Appel went from learning from guys like that to being on the same lists as them, and he said that feeling was almost surreal.

“I played a tournament with all of those guys too and it was really cool to get to meet them. All those players that are up there I know, we talk and know each other pretty well, so it’s just fun to know all of them,” he said. “Hopefully I’ll be playing with them or against them at the next level too.”

The next step in his career, Appel said, will be to play at Kirkwood Community College, who finished the year with the best record in the Iowa Community College Athletic College Division II.

“I really like winning and they told me we should probably win a national championship next year so that was big for me,” he said. “When I was up there playing I liked a few of their players a lot, they are some better players and it was fun playing there.”

Not only is Appel joining some strong talent already with the Eagles, he also comes in with a great freshman class of players who he knows well.

“[Seybian Sims from Iowa City West] is going there, and he’s one of my good friends, and then we got [Devonte Thedford from Des Moines Hoover] to go there too so it will be a lot of fun because I played with Devonte with the Wolves for a little while,” Appel said. “It will be a lot of fun playing with them again.”

After playing with Kirkwood, Appel said his goal is to get an NCAA Division I offer, and then possibly look into playing professionally overseas. Once his playing career is done, he said basketball will always be a part of his life, maybe even teaching it to others.

“Maybe a high school coach but I want to be a physical therapist so I don’t know, if I could work in a high school job then maybe but I don’t know about being a college coach,” Appel said.

No matter where he goes after graduation, the season Appel had will be talked about for some time in Marshalltown, and he said he hopes this is the beginning of a golden age for Bobcat hoops.

“I just hope this is a turn for the program. Hopefully the kids just want to keep winning games and getting better,” he said.

All-Area Boys Basketball

Player of the Year — Luke Appel, sr., Marshalltown

Coach of the Year — Dustin Peska, South Tama County

FIRST TEAM

Jarius Bear, sr., Meskwaki

Tyler DeBondt, sr., East Marshall

Zane Johnson, sr., East Mashall

Caden Kickbush, sr., Gladbrook-Reinbeck

Zaine Leedom, sr., East Marshall

Gabe Shields, sr., South Tama County

SECOND TEAM

Taté Bear, jr., Meskwaki

Joseph Halverson, jr., West Marshall

Matthew Hill, sr., Colo-NESCO

Brayden Peterson, jr., GMG

Peyton Pope, so., West Marshall

Kevin Rewoldt, sr., South Hardin

HONORABLE MENTION

Philip Bower, sr., Colo-NESCO

Beau Coberley, sr., West Marshall

Alex Hames, jr., AGWSR

Nicholas Sierra, sr., North Tama

Mason Skovgard, sr., Gladbrook-Reinbeck

Sterling Tyon, sr., South Tama County

Newsletter

Today's breaking news and more in your inbox

I'm interested in (please check all that apply)

• Daily Newsletter
• Breaking News
• Obituaries

Are you a paying subscriber to the newspaper? *

• Yes
• No