Inductees

In March of 1995, their season having been detoured away from the state championship game, two of Drexel High School’s girls basketball players essentially made a pact.

There in the hotel, while going over the scouting report for a third-place game, expectations were already being raised for next winter. BryAnn Cook Middleton and Stephany Dawson Spiker were making sure of it.

“Neither one of us really wanted to play in the game the next day. All that we wanted was to get back to work and start preparing for the next season,” Spiker recalled. “We both said, ‘We didn’t come here to play for third place.’ Nor did we come there to play for second.”

In the preseason, a photo of the Hearnes Center was taped on a locker room wall, and what transpired from there became legendary in a rural community south of Kansas City. And it’s why the Missouri Sports Hall of Fame proudly inducted the 1996 Drexel High School Girls Basketball State Championship Team with the Class of 2021.

Coached by Brent Bartlett, the Lady Bobcats won the Class 1 state championship, finishing a perfect 31-0 following a 60-45 victory against Gallatin.

Even all these years later, locals can still envision them on the court of the old gym: Middleton at point guard, Jenny Still Wheeler at guard, Lindsay Mills Douglas at guard and defensive stopper, Christi Russell Shannon at forward, Stephany Dawson Spiker at center and then post subs Tonya Bailey, Brooke Hettinger and Lesley Mayfield McClure, the versatile Amy Seuferling along with guards Adrianne Cook Lane and Amy Fink Basore.

Drexel won 28 games by an average of 35.1 points. But the Lady Bobcats also stiff-armed drama: They won the regional 54-52 on Shannon’s buzzer-beating layup after Crestridge blew up the pick-and-roll, and won the quarterfinal 57-48 after overcoming a 17-point deficit.

That took them back to the Hearnes Center. This time, they finished the job.

“I don’t remember talking about our goals much,” said Middleton said, referring to the Hearnes Center poster being taped in the locker room, “but everyone knew what it was.”

The state title was years in the making, as several girls played on summer AAU teams. In high school, players usually hit the gym whenever they could in the summer, lifted weights and were even there on New Year’s Eve.

“Everything we did was intense and competitive, but we had fun together on and off the court,” said Douglas. “We truly enjoyed being around each other and spent our time together even when we didn’t have to.”

A former Missouri State University baseball player, Bartlett pulled a lot of it together, demanding exhausting conditioning drills and calling for relentless defense. He also took the team to MSU’s summer team camp when it was led by coach Cheryl Burnett (MSHOF Legend 2015).

His saying was, “Offense sells tickets, defense wins championships.” The offense? Try a fly transition break to a motion, with a few set ball screen plays. The defense? Yeah, it was no picnic against Drexel’s full-court man-to-man.

“To help take pressure off the players, I never would talk to the girls about winning,” Barlett said. “It was always about competing as hard as they could, with intelligence, and that I would be happy with them as a coach no matter the outcome.”

Overall, it was a team effort throughout the season.

In Drexel’s closest regular-season win – a 54-50 victory against Warsaw — all guards fouled out, leaving Shannon and Spiker to bring the ball up court. The next day in practice, Bartlett ramped up the team’s defensive strategy.

In that quarterfinal that nearly wrecked their season, the 17-point deficit got erased with a few adjustments. The team turned to a pressure defense that created turnovers, fueling the comeback.

What a year it was.

“The lessons we learned from being on this team has impacted the people we are,” Middleton said. “We are all professionals of some kind.  I know I wake up every morning with the same work ethic toward my job that I did for the basketball we played everyday, whether it be a practice or game day.

“We learned that hard work pays off, how to be a part of a team and play our roles, how to set goals and work daily to achieve them. We learned to love people who we compete against, how to be cheerleaders for other women, that making mistakes makes you better. We learned to never give up.”