Brent Knight looks back on his senior class at Emporia High in 1995 and remembers a group that he believes, athletically, might rank with one of the best EHS has ever had.
“I mean, understand that aside from our track and cross country programs that were top three in the state — the women’s track team won State that year — you had a men’s basketball team that got runner-up at State that year,” he said. “And then you had an All-American swimmer. And then, actually I was probably the second-best track guy that year.”
Knight earned more than his share of the Spartans’ athletic glory of the period before he headed to Georgia Tech on a track scholarship. As a junior and senior track runner at EHS, he won back-to-back State individual gold medals in the 800 meters and back-to-back team golds for his part in the 4x800 relay. On top of those four State titles, he was also part of the 1993 boys cross country team that won the Class 6A State championship.
Today Knight, who earned his business degree from Georgia Tech in 1999, lives in Denver and works for CoBank, a cooperative bank that provides financial services, such as loans and leases, for rural businesses and organizations. He admits he struggled in his finance courses at Tech, so he finds it ironic that he’s in the field he’s in. But as it turned out, it’s a great fit for him “from a mind and intellectual stimulation perspective, and just the general enjoyment of doing this work.”
“I absolutely love what I’m doing now,” he said, “and can see myself doing this until I retire or drop dead.”
After competing on the Spartan cross country squad that won the State title in the fall of 1993, Knight earned his first track State titles at the end of that school year. He combined with Kevin McGinn, Jamin Swift and Brent Stover to win the 4x800 gold, and Knight won the 800 title with a time of 1:53.40.
In ’95, Knight repeated as the 800 champ, clocking a 1:55.12, and earned the 4x800 title with McGinn, Brian Guild and Jesse Taylor.
Knight’s foremost memories of his career at EHS include the training of then-coach Bob Karr, who pushed the Spartans hard to succeed.
“His philosophy was a lot of volume, a lot of intensity,” Knight said. “And comparative to the training regimens of other athletes, at least in the state of Kansas, I think we had a pretty rigorous training regimen under Coach Karr.
“But I think if you bought into his philosophy, and you committed yourself to it, you could achieve really great things.”
Knight set the school record in the 800, but he’s inclined to think McGinn, who set school records and won gold medals of his own, and went on to run at Kansas, was the better track runner.
“It was an extraordinary group of people in that school,” he said. “And academically, I think it was an extraordinary group of individuals as well. I can’t tell you how successful so many people have been in that class.”
At Georgia Tech, Knight’s track career fell short of where he wishes it would’ve gone. As a junior Yellow Jacket, he did finish second in the Atlantic Coast Conference in the 800, and he was on a distance medley relay team that set the school record. But during his senior season, an Achilles injury that had first hindered him during his sophomore year popped up again.
“And by then, it was game over,” he said. “There was just no way I could run and train and compete at that level with that type of injury.”
Knight and his wife, Matti, have been married for almost three years. He’s the vice president of CoBank’s structure and project finance group, which focuses mainly on financing projects for energy systems.
“Meaning, obviously, there’s been a big renewable push, with some of the government incentives in play, so we’ve done quite a bit of wind,” he said. “But at the same time, we still do traditional power sources, like coal and natural gas.”
His workday in Denver is usually either spent doing analytical work or negotiating the details of a project deal, and he travels frequently. Knight is in his seventh year with CoBank; he worked for the bank in Atlanta until 2007, when he transferred to Denver. He said CoBank is in a unique situation — a good one — among banks right now.
“Because of the sort of financial meltdown that occurred late last year, there are a lot of banks that are sort of struggling to shore up their capital positions,” he said. “And so the first thing they do is that they lock down the volume of lending that they do, so bank and debt capital is pretty scarce, still. So if you’ve got capital to put at work, you’re highly valuable and looked on very favorably in the market now. And so we just thankfully happen to be one of those banks.”
His parents still live in Emporia, and he gets back when he can, revisiting roots he remembers fondly.
“I think (Emporia) had so much to offer,” he said. “The people were great, the town was basically a perfect size, and it was just generally a great city to grow up in.”