In his 40 years covering and writing about college athletics, 2016 Missouri Sports Hall of Fame inductee Mark Stillwell steered a different course from his fellow sports information professionals.
Working as Sports Information Director at Missouri State University, Stillwell shared his Bears’ weekend sports competition assignments with active participation in the U.S. Navy Reserve.
From when he started at MSU in 1972, Stillwell had a full weekend of Navy drills two days each month at the Springfield Reserve Center, plus two weeks active duty for training every summer. The summer training involved a variety of shipboard and shore duty assignments for 20 years.
The Hall of Fame will honor Stillwell as part of the 2016 Enshrinement Ceremonies presented by Killian Construction on Sunday, January 31. For tickets, call 417-889-3100.
“It was a challenge to juggle covering Bears’ football, men’s basketball and baseball with Navy obligations,” Stillwell recalls. “It made for some hectic weekends.”
Enlisting in the Navy as a Drury University freshman in 1963, Springfield native and Central High School graduate Stillwell went through Navy Officer Candidate School in Newport, R.I., and saw active duty aboard the aircraft career Princeton and in Vietnam, Taiwan and Korea from his 1967 Drury graduation until 1970. He was Drury SID from 1970 to 1972.
“Our reserve center shifted from Thursday evening drills to weekend training about the time I changed jobs. I was meeting myself coming back 10 months a year,” he says.
Stillwell’s sports interest began when he started following the St. Louis Cardinals and collecting baseball cards at age 8. He worked five summers as a baseball/softball scorekeeper for the Springfield Park Board and worked on school papers and yearbooks at Pipkin Junior High School, Central and Drury. He was student SID his last three years in school at Drury.
At Missouri State, Stillwell guided the information flow for Bears athletics through some 23 sports with MSU participation in seven different athletics conferences, including MSU upgrading to NCAA Division status I in 1982-83. MSU hosted NCAA regional or national competition in eight sports, and publications Stillwell produced won more than 60 awards from the College Sports Information Directors of America (CoSIDA) and the Council for Advancement and Support of Education.
MSU athletes made hundreds of NCAA championship entries with dozens of team postseason participation and more than a dozen conference all-sports championships. MSU capstones were a trip to the NCAA men’s basketball Sweet 16, two women’s basketball NCAA Final Four appearances and a baseball College World Series. Along the way was coverage of building or renovating six major athletics facilities.
During his MSU time, Stillwell reported on Bears’ events from 40 different states. In addition to covering football, men’s basketball and baseball, Stillwell provided color analysis on basketball radio broadcasts for 20 years. Stillwell was assistant director of athletics for public relations his last 10 years at MSU.
“We had a family of dedicated administrators, coaches, and staff members working with some amazing student-athletes. Everyone joined in the successes those athletes achieved,” Stillwell notes.
With guidance from colleagues at MSU and other schools, Stillwell shepherded the information flow from the days of paper, pencils and manual typewriters through several evolutions into work done on computers and the Internet.
“We graduated through four or five different ways of producing game programs, media guides and other publications until desktop publications came along,” Stillwell says.
He regards one of his great satisfactions having some three dozen MSU students and staff members go into or stay in sports information after leaving MSU’s SID office. “The motivation the young folks in our office demonstrated matched the professionalism of people who had been in college sports for many years,” he notes.
Stillwell was inducted into the Missouri Valley Conference Hall of Fame as winner of the 2008 Paul Morrison Award, into the MSU Athletics Hall of Fame in 2009, and the Springfield Area Sports Hall of Fame in 2010. He remains active assisting all three groups and also volunteers for the Southwest Missouri Humane Society and Springfield Little Theatre. He has been an official scorer for Double-A Texas League baseball since the Springfield Cadrinals’ arrival to Hammons Field in 2005.
Stillwell’s wife, Tina, is a retired 34-year veteran of the Missouri State information operation, and the couple has a cocker spaniel, Hardy.
And the Navy? In his 19 years at MSU, Stillwell held command of four Springfield Navy Reserve units and was promoted to Lieutenant Commander in 1977, Commander in 1981 and Captain in 1988. He retired from the Navy in 1991 after 28 years’ service.
“From the very beginning, I’ve been the luckiest guy alive,” Stillwell concludes.
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Enshrinement Ceremonies 2016 presented by Killian Construction
What: Missouri Sports Hall of Fame Enshrinement
When: 11 a.m. reception presented by Meeks The Builder’s Choice at the Hall of Fame, 3861 E. Stan Musial Drive; 4 p.m. reception & 5 p.m. dinner & event on Jan. 31
Where: University Plaza Hotel & Convention Center
Associate Sponsors: Advertising Plus; Hiland Dairy; Hillyard, Inc.; White River Valley Electric Cooperative
Missouri Sports Legend: University of Central Missouri athletic director Jerry Hughes
Class of 2016: Mizzou Tigers football coach Gary Pinkel; former big-league pitcher Jerry Reuss, longtime NFL coach Gregg Williams, Springfield native and retired PBR bull rider L.J. Jenkins, Kansas City Chiefs center Tim Grunhard, St. Joseph native and Olympic gymnastics silver medalist Terin Humphrey, Kansas City native and St. Louis Cardinals linebacker Eric Williams, longtime Kansas City Royals scouting director Art Stewart, Evangel University men’s basketball coach Steve Jenkins, West Plains native and former Texas Christian University baseball coach Lance Brown, former University of Missouri and Olympic track and field standout Natasha Kaiser-Brown, Missouri Southern men’s basketball coach Robert Corn, St. Louis University High School racquetball coach Joe Koestner, Missouri State University sports information director Mark Stillwell, John Burroughs High School football coach Jim Lemen, The John Burroughs School football program and the Mizzou Tigers’ 1966 Sugar Bowl team. The John Q. Hammons Founder’s Award will go to Med-Pay, Inc., owned by Gordon and Marshall Kinne, and Ken Meyer of Meyer Communications is the recipient of the President’s Award.
Tickets: Call 417-889-3100. Individual tickets are $150. Tables of 10 are $1,500 and include associate sponsor recognition in the printed program and autographed prints. Sponsorship opportunities such as congratulatory ads also are available.
