Inductees

In 1994, a former Joplin cub reporter found himself across the globe at the Lillehammer Olympics, having just covered Dan Jansen winning the speed skating gold medal to end eight years of heartbreak.

Mike DeArmond, a sportswriter, wrote his byline and knocked out the story.

“The night ended with Karen Rosen, my friend who worked for the Atlanta Journal, and I seated across from each other in a darkened media room, looking up from our typewriters and seeing the tears in each other’s eyes,” DeArmond said. “So fresh was the moment when Jansen took a victory lap with his little daughter – named Jane after the sister Dan lost to leukemia (during the 1988 Olympics) – in his arms.”

In other words, DeArmond poured his heart and soul into a 40-year career as a sportswriter, and it’s why the Missouri Sports Hall of Fame proudly inducted him with the Class of 2024.

A 1968 graduate of Joplin High School, DeArmond earned a degree from the University of Missouri School of Journalism in 1972. From there, he spent his career with The Kansas City Star, retiring in 2012.

In sports, he covered eight Olympic games: Barcelona, Atlanta, Sydney, Athens, Albertville, Lillehammer, Nagano and Salt Lake City. He also was one of 16 U.S. journalists to accompany the U.S. Olympic Committee for a site inspection tour of Cuba and coverage of the 1991 Pan American Games. DeArmond eventually produced an 11-story series on life in Cuba, and breaking news stories on interviews with Fidel Castro.

In his four decades at the Star and Kansas City Times, he covered the National Basketball Association’s Kansas City-Omaha Kings (1973-1978), the Royals (1973-1980) and the University of Missouri (1989-2012).

DeArmond also spent much of the 1980s as an editor, an assistant city editor and as an assistant sports editor. In fact, he was one of the first journalists on the scene and wrote the front-page story of the tragic skywalk collapse at the Hyatt Regency Hotel on July 17, 1981.

Along the way, he won numerous awards from the Associated Press Sports Editors and the Missouri Press Association.

All this from a writer who spent his teenage years in Joplin writing for the high school newspaper and, in essence, launched his sports writing career by successfully pitching a freelance gig to The Joplin Globe.

Dressed in cutoff jean shorts, a T-shirt and sandals, DeArmond met with publisher H. Lang Rogers since sports editor Wendell Redden was out. DeArmond, who had played sports but was never a star, floated the idea of writing about southwest Missouri athletes during his days at Mizzou. He’d mail the stories and, if good, Redden could run them. And he would do it for free if necessary, although the Globe chose to pay for every one.

“Was I surprised? Not at the time,” DeArmond said. “Now? Astounded.”

Before college graduation, the Star hired him. Initially, he covered the Interscholastic League city schools before moving on to the Royals, as well as Kansas State football and basketball.

However, with a growing family, DeArmond in the 1980s traded in working sources for working copy – with both roles considered highly important grunt work. He was an assistant sports editor and an assistant news editor.

In 1989, he became the Star’s beat writer for Mizzou athletics. He covered the 1994 Elite Eight run, the 1995 NCAA Tournament loss to UCLA on Tyus Edney’s coast-to-coast layup, and the entire Gary Pinkel era.

Mizzou’s 1994 basketball team was the first to finish 14-0 in the Big Eight Conference in 23 years. The Tigers survived after a 25-foot shot by Nebraska’s Eric Piatkowski spun out of the basket at the buzzer.

His lede? “Somebody up there didn’t just like the Missouri Tigers on Saturday. Somebody loved them,” DeArmond wrote.

“Balancing fairness with holding athletes and coaches accountable was one of the toughest things I battled throughout my four decades in reporting,” DeArmond said. “I had my dust-ups with Jack Hartman, Norm Stewart, George Brett, Freddie Patek, Gary Pinkel, Quin Snyder and Ewing Kauffman. But it never impacted how I reported the next story, the broad view. I like to think there was a general exchange of respect.”

Fortunately, DeArmond always had the support of his wife, Barbara, and their children, Gabe and Cortney.

“I cannot imagine having been anything but a journalist. I just can’t,” DeArmond said. “I got into the profession believing I could help change the world, ultimately discovered the misplaced conceit in that belief but never stopped trying.”