In December, the Post Register’s sports desk discovered that senior basketball player Keegan Hansen was attempting to become eligible to play for Bonneville High School after transferring from Capital the previous summer. This was big news for us, not just because a great player was attempting to play in our area, but also because he played for the Bees during his freshman and sophomore seasons.

The first thing I wrote was a short post about Hansen’s attempt to play for Bonneville. That post can be found here.

As I write, the Idaho High School Activities Association would determine Hansen’s eligibility four days after my story was published I checked in with the IHSAA on that Tuesday and was informed he was declared eligible.

I broke the news on Twitter (scroll down to Dec. 9 on that linked page).

I then wrote a story on his eligibility for the next day’s Post Register, which can be found here.

But Hansen’s story didn’t end there. Through interviews with Bonneville’s head coach and discussions with my editor, I heard that one of Hansen’s main decisions to transfer to Capital last year was to try to reconnect with his father, who had been absent for most of Hansen’s life.

So, I interviewed Hansen a couple of days after he was declared eligible, and he told me his story of trying — and ultimately failing — to develop a relationship with his elusive father (Hansen declined to give me contact information for his father or mother).

That Sunday, the Post Register published my feature on Hansen’s one-year quest to reconnect with his father. Here’s the link to that story. Below are the first eight paragraphs.

Keegan Hansen was riding in his friend’s car when his cell phone started ringing.

The call was from an unknown number. A curious Hansen answered.

It was his father, La’Mar Davis.

Hansen hadn’t seen Davis since he was a kid, let alone talked to him. Now, in his sophomore year at Bonneville High School, Hansen was catching up with the male figure he craved for the past decade.

Near the end of the hour-long phone call, Davis asked his son a question: Did Hansen want to transfer schools and live with him?

After some deliberation, Hansen said yes.

This marked the beginning of a two-year emotional maze for Hansen. He lived in the Boise area for a year to be closer to Davis, 49, but their relationship fizzled. That would derail many student-athletes. Hansen, now a senior at Bonneville, keeps on moving.

“I grew a lot from that experience moving to Boise,” Hansen said. “I felt that I could take that, grow with it and become a new person here where I started.”