By Ron Wilson, Director of the Huck Boyd National Institute for Rural Development at Kansas State University.

Teamwork. It's one of the fundamental lessons of sports. Team members learn to work together and help each other. But sometimes we forget about the teamwork that exists between a team itself and the community that supports it. Today we'll meet three young women athletes who represent the best of teamwork and community.

Kansas has a tradition of outstanding young women basketball players from the small towns that dot this state. Jackie Stiles, Nicole Ohlde, Kendra Wecker, and Laurie Koehn are some who come to mind.

Today, let's meet a new crop of up-and-coming young women athletes who are already making their mark on the big time college scene. These three true freshmen – Marlies Gipson, JoAnn Hamlin and Shalee Lehning - are starting for the Kansas State University women's basketball team, and they hail from rural Kansas. I asked them about the significance of sports in the small towns of our state.

Marlies Gipson comes from McPherson, Kansas. Her mother works at a school there and her father is an electrician. Marlies says, "McPherson is a basketball town.  There is awesome support, and the people are always there to support you."

JoAnn Hamlin is another freshman who is starting at center for the Wildcats. She graduated from Winfield High School, but grew up on a ranch north of there. In fact, she had to drive 30 minutes to get to Winfield. Her home place is closer to Douglass, population 1,801 people.

JoAnn says, "I'm a big country girl. My dad owns a ranch and we worked on the ranch during the summers before I started playing so much basketball."

Maybe that's the reason that rural Kansas produces so many good basketball players: It's easier to play basketball than to work on the farm. Or at least it's more visible, if not more profitable.

The third Kansas freshman is Shalee Lehning, a point guard from Sublette in southwest Kansas. Her mom teaches computing and her dad is a superintendent with a natural gas company there. Sublette is a town of 1,583 people. Now, that's rural.

Shalee says, "I love the small town atmosphere. There were 36 kids in my graduating class. Sports is a way of life out there, and everybody's knowledgeable. The whole community gets involved."

When the Sublette girl's basketball team was competing in the state championship game, some 800 or 900 fans made the 278-mile trip to support them. That's literally more than half the town. Shalee says, "During those games, they would shut down the stores back home."

These Kansas girls have found a kinship. They played together on the Kansas Belles, an AAU team for girls 19 and younger, and then came to K-State where their small-town values are still important to them.

JoAnn says, "Manhattan is a college town, but not too big. It still has a community feel to it."

Marlies says, "This feels like a home away from home. The community support is awesome, it was a major factor in wanting to come here."

That support is demonstrated by the fact that K-State's women's basketball was in the top eight nationally in fan attendance.

When asked about becoming the next generation of Kansas sports heroes, succeeding Ohlde, Wecker, and Koehn, the girls are humble yet confident. Marlies Gipson says, "I looked up to them a lot. We're not going to replace them, but we'll make our own way."

Shalee says, "There'll never be another Ohlde, Wecker or Koehn, but we want to build our own identity."

And when asked about the highlights of their young collegiate careers, they don't cite their record-setting individual performances, but rather they speak of the team's key wins.

Teamwork. It's a fundamental lesson of sports. These team members have learned the value of helping each other.  They also understand the special teamwork which can exist between a team and its community. We salute Marlies Gipson, JoAnn Hamlin, Shalee Lehning, and other small town athletes for making a difference with the outstanding way in which they represent their schools and communities. It's good to see them on the same team.

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The mission of the Huck Boyd National Institute for Rural Development is to enhance rural development by helping rural people help themselves. The Kansas Profile radio series and columns are produced with assistance from the K-State Research and Extension Department of Communications News Unit. Audio and text files of Kansas Profiles are available at http://www.kansasprofile.com. For more information about the Huck Boyd Institute, interested persons can visit http://www.oznet.ksu.edu/huckboyd/.