Before they would ever be nicknamed “The Jolly Green Giants” and long before they would ever tower over high school boys basketball in Missouri, the Parkview High School Vikings had to learn expectations. Players such Gail Fredrick will never forget the scene: New coach Bill Harding, who put aside running a Dairy Queen in the… Read more »
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Category: Teams/Programs
Pembroke Hill High School Boys Tennis Program
On the south side of Kansas City, you’ll find yourself at the epicenter of tennis. Tucked away on one side of the Pembroke Hill Ward Parkway Campus, you’ll come upon six – yes, six – newly renovated blue courts, complete with mesh netting and even vertical signs that detail the score. However, to understand the… Read more »
Platte County High School Wrestling Era 1999-2010
Former Platte County wrestling assistant coach Rick Frazier noticed a difference in how head coach Phil Dorman ran his program when he joined the Pirates in the fall of 2002. “The first year I coached at Platte County, we had two individual state champions, but as a team we finished just off the podium,”… Read more »
Plattsburg High Shool 1979 State Championship Football Team
In the summer of 1979, during the hot and humid days north of Kansas City, the football players readying for Plattsburg High School’s season hit a two-week training camp ready to work. In some ways, they could have taken their lunch pails and hardhats to the field daily. After all, they had a job to… Read more »
2000 & 2001 Pleasant Hill High School Softball State Championship Teams
In October 2001, in the 21st inning of the Class 3 state championship softball game, after teammate Samantha Fleeman already had pitched every inning and struck out 44, Emily Fladten stood at second base for Pleasant Hill. And then Devon Francy delivered a base hit. “And I remember knowing exactly what to do, as second… Read more »
1986-1996 Era Pleasant Hill High School Wrestling
You want blue-collar? A rags to riches story? In the town of Pleasant Hill, just southeast of Kansas City, high school wrestlers practiced in the basement of an elementary school after several years of calling the stage of a gymnasium home. And in the late 1970s, an assistant coach who had no wrestling background would… Read more »
Poplar Bluff High School Boys Golf Program
Down in southeast Missouri, there’s a town where golf truly matters. Where the high school’s sleek trophy case – complete with ambient lighting – is out of room. Where in the old days of open lunch, the guys would swing by one of the courses to get in more work. And where Buddy’s Pro Shop… Read more »
Potosi High School Boys Cross Country Program
In eastern Missouri, where two-lane highways wind and dart through the pines in and near the Mark Twain National Forest, you’ll find a quaint community called Potosi. From here has risen a giant in high school cross country, and for good reason. In the 1990s and on, middle schoolers logged 40 miles a week, increasing… Read more »
Purdy High School Girls Basketball 1980-1982 Era
Less than a decade after the passage of federal Title IX legislation led public schools to offer girls sports, Purdy High School’s girls basketball teams of 1980, 1981 and 1982 made history. These teams defined an era, setting a standard for excellence that still resonates in the community today. The Lady Eagles of the early… Read more »
Putnam County High School Softball Era 1988-2007
When the 1988 softball team of Putnam County High School took the field for its home-opener, there wasn’t a softball field at all. Instead, it was built for baseball – albeit with no outfield fence, poor lighting and limited bleachers. In fact, it had been that way since the program’s founding in 1980. However, the… Read more »
2004-2006 Era Raymore-Peculiar High School Football
In the summer of 2004, or five years after the arrival of coach Tom Kruse, football players at Raymore-Peculiar High School were about to set the state aflame. Kruse’s 2002 team had finished as a state runner-up, and participation numbers kept climbing. “We told them we were going to two-platoon, meaning guys would only play… Read more »
1990 Raytown South Boys Basketball Team
In early January 1990, the difficult news could have rattled an already talented Raytown South boys basketball team. There in the living room of coach Bud Lathrop, they learned that their star center who had committed to the Kansas Jayhawks, Chris Lindley, had a foot severed in a train accident and could no longer play.… Read more »
All American Red Heads
Decades before a push to add women’s sports in colleges and high schools – and long before Title IX would pave the way for so many – an idea born in the southwest Missouri community of Cassville actually may have set the eventual stage. There, in 1936, businessman C.M. “Ole” Olson started a barnstorming women’s… Read more »
1994 Republic High School Girls Basketball State Championship Team
Had a Hollywood producer cast them for a basketball movie, the opening scene probably would resembled an old western and high-noon showdown, complete with dead stares. And why not? As the curtain rose on the 1993-1994 basketball season, the Republic High School Lady Tigers were on a mission. After all, just months earlier, Republic’s Cinderella… Read more »
Rock Bridge High School Football State Championship Teams 1975 & 1977
In the fall of 1973, Columbia Public Schools opened a new high school called Rock Bridge. A year later, the varsity football team went but missed the playoffs because of the state’s complicated points system. “There was some disbelief in 1974 about how a team can be undefeated and not be included in the state… Read more »
Rock Bridge High School Tennis Program
In a way, the tennis complex sitting behind Rock Bridge High School is an impressive site. After all, it’s here where they’ve install 12 — yes, 12 – courts and have done it right, with that blue and green colors like what you might find at the U.S. Open. A place fit for a queen… Read more »