Inductees

On a warm afternoon in early spring of 1965, Jim Aziere ran a 5-mile warmup on the back roads of Central Missouri before track practice at the University of Central Missouri. He set a goal to accomplish what few people do in a lifetime. From that moment, he began leaving footprints everywhere he went.

Students at Bishop Miege High School asked him to start a soccer team that fall, and the first high school soccer team in Kansas was born. The following year, as a graduate assistant in track at the University of Kansas, he wrote a Masters thesis that gained national attention and was used as a prototype for other students.

After graduation, Aziere turned the basketball team at the American School in Honduras into a powerhouse, then returned to Kansas City and joined the varsity football staff at De La Salle Academy where he had graduated. He was also appointed head football and soccer coach.

“I didn’t like soccer, but I was appointed head coach. A fellow coach told me soccer was un-American, but soccer had taken hold in Kansas City in just two years,” Aziere said. That winter of 1968, he launched the first high school soccer league, the MO-Kan League. A year later, De La Salle High School won the state football championship, and his track team became a Missouri powerhouse. The academy closed in 1971.

“You should apply for the head swimming job,” a fellow coach at Raytown High School casually said four years later. “You would be good at it.”

He was more than good at it, and the Missouri Sports Hall of Fame proudly inducts Aziere with the Class of 2017. Between 1974 and 2017, Aziere’s Raytown High School boys swim teams were 515-86-2 in duals, including 10 undefeated seasons. He had 13 individual state champions, two state record holders, three All-Americans and 56 All-State swimmers.

Aziere had never seen a swimming meet. Many of his athletes were inexperienced swimmers he recruited out of the cafeteria during lunch.

“Bob Timmons, who I served under at Kansas University, told me he liked coaching swimming more than track. That was good enough for me,” Aziere said. “I knew nothing about strokes, starts and turns, but training was my forte.”

From 1984 to 1997, his girls teams were 141-38 in duals, had one state champion and six All-State swimmers. His water polo teams were 278-64-2 and produced three All-Americans.

Aziere’s footprints were wide and many. During his early years at Raytown, he established a summer track team and golden Midwest Track Meet. As a swimming coach, Aziere co-founded the Missouri High School Swim Coaches Association, and organized clinics for Missouri coaches for more than a decade.

In 1982, he was invited to attend the Unites States Coaches College in Colorado Springs, and a year later was the first high school coach to speak at the World Swimming Coaches Clinic in Las Vegas. His presentation, “The Organization and Administration of a Swim Team” was re-published by United States Swimming from 1984 to 2000. Aziere also served as Assistant Coach for the Junior National Water Polo Team.

Coaching was not Aziere’s only passion. He wrote Law In A Free Society, a high school Social Studies course that gained national attention, and presented that course at the National Social Studies Convention in Chicago.

In 1989, Aziere testified in federal court on behalf of the student in the Kansas City School District  in Kallmia Jenkins vs. the State of Missouri. He was appointed to the Federal Taskforce Committee to write the manual for the aquatic program for the Kansas City Magnet School System.

Today, 53 years later, Aziere still leaves footprints, touching the lives of his athletes through 134 high school seasons. That does not include the 22 years he coached his USS age group team. Aziere is finishing his 19th year as an elected official of the Raytown Board of Alderman. In his spare time, he and his wife Beverly go to the home he built himself at the Lake of the Ozark, and entertains his children and grandchildren.

Footprints don’t have an identification, but, Aziere, a member of the Missouri Sports Hall of Fame, serves as a role model for everyone. He failed second grade, was reading at the sixth-grade level his sophomore in college, but used the lessons he learned in the sports arena to better himself in the classroom, reach his goals and become the best he could be.