With growing interest from folks eager to raise scholarships for southwest Missouri graduates heading to the University of Missouri – more than $125,000 has been generated in recent years – the annual Tiger Ball & Scholarship Auction presented by Meyer Farms, KWTO & KTXR HD is moving to a larger venue. The event begins at… Read more »
The Missouri Sports Hall of Fame is adding to its biggest baseball celebration in years, as longtime Hiland Dairy Foods Sales Manager Mark Speight will be honored May 25 with the President’s Award and a group of former high school, college and pro baseball and softball standouts will be recognized with the Diamond 9 awards… Read more »
The Missouri Sports Hall of Fame joins with the family and friends of Doug Potts in mourning the former Bolivar High School football coach. He passed away Tuesday at age 79. Potts was inducted into the Missouri Sports Hall of Fame in 2007 and had remained active with the Hall of Fame as part of… Read more »
The Missouri Sports Hall of Fame honored Jodie Adams, the former Director of the Springfield-Greene County Park Board, with the President’s Award and welcomed new inductees on Thursday during the fourth annual Women’s Sports Luncheon presented by the Bee Payne-Stewart Foundation. A crowd of almost 700 gathered at the University Plaza Hotel & Convention Center… Read more »
Sponsorship tables and tickets remain available for the Missouri Sports Hall of Fame’s fourth annual Women’s Sports Luncheon presented by the Bee Payne-Stewart Foundation. It’s set for 11 a.m. Thursday at the University Plaza Hotel & Convention Center in downtown Springfield. Call 417-889-3100. Jodie Adams, the former Director of the Springfield-Greene County Park Board, will… Read more »
Former Rolla High School standout Sophie Cox Stagner will never forget how her dad organized a youth travel soccer team – “We otherwise would never have been privy to this,” she said – or the positive influence of a couple of coaches. That’s how she became All-State and parlayed her success into a college scholarship.… Read more »
From the moment her father put a basketball in her hands at age 2, Joann Rutherford loved the game, and her passion for the sport only grew from there. How could it not? Her father, who had played at Pittsburg State University and with the U.S. Air Force team, had installed a full-length court in… Read more »
After those grueling days on the soccer fields in her youth and teenage years, Tara Bailes could always count on family to lift her spirits. Her mom would be there for a hug. Her dad would lend a good ear. Her sisters would help her train. Talk about a great formula for success, both at… Read more »
For young athletes who get discouraged, former Sarcoxie High School volleyball standout Chelsea Taylor Corp is a great example of why you should keep fighting the good fight. You see, as she reached middle school and high school, her path crossed with the right coaches and, after her sophomore year, she hit a growth spurt.… Read more »
There’s no other way to say it. Amanda Newton Plotner was one of those athletes who you’d have to stop whatever you were doing and watch. She was that good as an All-State athlete in three sports at Republic High School and later an All-American basketball standout at Drury University. Now her career is being… Read more »
He grew up in the 1960s and 1970s in what’s now South Central Los Angeles where, in his words, “Many black males would die by the age of 25 because of gangs, the Crips and the Bloods, and yeah I lost some friends.” Leon Neal, the longtime coach of the Evangel University women’s basketball program,… Read more »
Her mom doubled as her tennis coach, her dad helped fine-tune her basketball skills and her sister became a great teammate, too. In other words, sports wasn’t simply an avenue to a college scholarship for Teresa Baird Beshore, an early 1990s standout for Springfield Catholic High School. “Athletics brought our family closer together,” said Baird,… Read more »
In her 31 years of coaching high school volleyball, Cheryl Shores rarely tried to sugarcoat it. “I was hard on them, I’m not going to lie,” said Shores, emphasizing that players were required to sign contracts and that standouts would be benched if need-be. “I lost a few games because of it. But, to me,… Read more »
For Springfield Central High School’s Ethan Brody, it was a chance to touch up on his golf game and spring-board into another memorable season. For golf novices such as Reeds Springs’ Jenna Wanko, it was even better. After all, a dozen PGA golf professionals from area courses were on hand. In other words, the 2017… Read more »
Mark Bailey, the first Missouri State Bears baseball player to reach the big leagues, soon will be inducted into the Missouri Sports Hall of Fame along with former Negro Leagues pitcher John Donaldson, Westran High School’s Kelly Odneal, St. Louis sports writer Rob Rains as well as Mark Stratton, the former Glendale High School and… Read more »
She emerged years ago as one of southwest Missouri’s best tennis players, later competed on championship softball teams and, fortunately, never forgot. That is, Jodie Adams never forgot what it truly meant for her, as a child and then a high school and college student-athlete, to learn the valuable lessons that sports so often teaches.… Read more »
