Ryan Murken

Your Prep Sports

IOWA CITY – The idea of moving wasn’t too appealing to Connor McCaffery.

When his father Fran McCaffery was hired as the head basketball coach at Iowa in March of 2010 the oldest of the McCaffery kids had the normal reservations of any sixth grader.  

Connor McCaffery remembers worrying about moving to a new state, attending a new school and mostly about meeting new friends.

“When we first left, we were leaving everything that they knew and they were really not anxious to leave,” Fran McCaffery explained. “The only thing they knew were their friends and their teams and their school they went to. It was a big step to move this far and have to make all new friends.”

Days into his new life in Iowa a chance encounter with a friendly potential neighbor helped Connor McCaffery make his first friend.

Seven years later that meeting has turned into an unbreakable bond between McCaffery and fellow West High seniors Nate Disterhoft and Izaya Ono-Fullard.

“When we first moved we were looking at a house and Nate came over and asked if I wanted to play basketball with him and his friends,” Connor McCaffery said. “That was my first encounter with people in Iowa.”

Since they met the trio has been as inseparable off the athletic venues as they have been imposing on them.

McCaffery, Disterhoft and Ono-Fullard were all starters on the West High basketball team that claimed the 4A state title last March and have led West High to back-to-back runner-up finishes in baseball the past two seasons.

“They’ve been through it all,” West High baseball coach Charlie Stumpff said. “All three of them in basketball and baseball have just been winners their whole life.”  

With their athletic careers at West High down to the final four days the trio has its sights set on adding a long-awaited baseball title to their resume.

Third-ranked West High (31-8) takes the first step toward its first baseball title in program history on Wednesday when it faces Cedar Rapids Washington (24-15) in the 4A state quarterfinals at 5 p.m. at Principal Park in Des Moines.

“It would mean the world to us,” Disterhoft said of winning a title. “Connor and Izaya and I have been up here for three years now and coach Stumpff is our leader and we love him so much and it would mean the world for us to get him a championship.”

Connor McCaffery wasn’t thinking about state titles when he moved to Iowa, just about finding some friends in his new town.

Disterhoft helped make that an easy task.

From their days at Wickham Elementary the two hit it off immediately.

“He walked in and he was taller than everybody else,” Disterhoft recalled of McCaffery. “I was eye level with everybody in the hallway and he just towered away from everybody.”

Disterhoft and McCaffery had something in common right away, a love of sports.

Every day after school they would head to one of their houses and pick a sport, sometimes baseball and sometimes basketball and play.

Ono-Fullard was already familiar with Disterhoft as an athlete after squaring off on basketball courts and baseball fields as kids.

“I had played against Nate a lot in basketball and I could never beat him,” Ono-Fullard said. “I finally started playing with him and we got to be good friends pretty fast.”

A top 100 national recruit and all-state basketball player, McCaffery first caught the attention of his friends on the baseball diamond.

The three first played together on the Diamond Dreams Longhorns USSSA team where Ono-Fullard got his first look at McCaffery.

“I think he can play in the major leagues, I’ve always thought that,” Ono-Fullard said. “I’ve always thought it came easy to him.”

The older they got the closer the friends became.

Baseball and basketball games in the yard turned into video game sessions or basement ping pong grudge matches where Disterhoft claims to be the champ.

Mostly, the trio just did what friends do, they hung out.

“When we first moved in, Nate lived literally like around the corner so they became buddies right away because they were in the same neighborhood and then the three of them played together on that Longhorns team,” Fran McCaffery said. “And of course, they went to school together and they’re always at each other’s houses. They’re just really, really close friends.”

Connor McCaffery burst onto the scene as a freshman starter on the West High state title winning basketball team in 2014.

The next spring all three got their chance to shine on the baseball diamond as sophomores.

West High was coming off a runner-up finish the previous season but had lost eight regular starters to graduation.

In came Disterhoft, McCaffery and Ono-Fullard ready to pick up the slack as underclassmen.

The trio combined for 139 hits and 88 RBI as everyday starters while helping West High to a 34-12 record and a second straight runner-up finish.  

“When they came in as sophomores we graduated so many guys the year before and Coach McCaffery had said these guys want to do something special this year,” Stumpff said. “I thought maybe that was kind of arrogant to have sophomores thinking that and they were in the state finals as sophomores and that was their mentality.”

That was just the start for the trio.

They helped West High to runner-up finishes in both sports as juniors before finally breaking through with a state basketball title in March.

Ono-Fullard and Disterhoft admitted to thinking about giving up hoops after seeing limited minutes as juniors.

Both credit McCaffery for getting them to stick with it through their senior season that ended by starting in the 4A title game.  

“I had my doubts, last year I didn’t play all that much but Connor was in my ear just telling me to keep working and I would get my shot,” Disterhoft said. “I owe Connor a lot for that. Getting that championship meant a lot.”

Now the trio will try to end their careers with the baseball title that has eluded West High for years.

The Trojans have won 100 games the past three seasons with Ono-Fullard, Disterhoft and McCaffery on varsity and own a 4-2 record at state during that time with two runner-up finishes.

“It would mean the world to us, it really would,” McCaffery said. “Winning basketball together was amazing but winning baseball would be even better because we are done with school now, this is our last thing we have together and I think we can do it.”

The threesome has been at the heart of a West High lineup that is the most productive in Class 4A.

The top three batters in the West High lineup, the long-time friends lead the Trojans in nearly every offensive category.

Ono-Fullard leads West High with a .425 batting average while Disterhoft is right behind at .406 and McCaffery isn’t far off the pace at .397.

A third baseman, Ono-Fullard leads the state with 10 home runs and has 58 RBI.

McCaffery, who has played infield outfield and pitched this season, has six home runs and has driven in 48 runs.

The leadoff hitter and first baseman, Disterhoft has a team-high 25 stolen bases to go with 24 RBI and 34 runs.

“They were talented when they came in and they’ve done what you hope people do they’ve grown and they’ve got better as baseball players and people,” Stumpff said. “All three of them are smart, charismatic they know what it takes to win and they have led our group this year in a big way on the field and off the field and that’s what you hope will happen and we are lucky it happened.”

Regardless of what happens at Principal Park in Des this week the friends will go their separate ways in a few weeks.

McCaffery is headed to Iowa to play both basketball and baseball, Disterhoft will attend Iowa to study finance and Ono-Fullard is set to play baseball at Kirkwood beginning this fall.

“I’m going to be friends with those guys forever,” Ono-Fullard said. “I know I’m going to talk to those guys for a long time and I’m going to follow Connor through his athletic career and I know he’s going to follow me and I know he wants the best for me.”