News

Team: Drury University

Filbert Five – Class of 2016

CLASS OF 2016 Women’s Team Kayli Combs Price (Branson/College of the Ozarks) Tag Morris (Blue Eye/Evangel) Bethany Creed (Ash Grove/Drury) Casey Garrison Powell (Bolivar/Missouri State) Kami Scrivner Eddington (Mount Vernon/Pittsburg State) Men’s Team Daniel Cutbirth (Hurley/Evangel) Tim Brown (Rogersville/Drury) Corey Stone (Reeds Spring/College of the Ozarks) Junior Roweton (Halfway/SBU/Drury) Tim West (Skyline/State Fair juco/Nebraska)

Filbert Five – Class of 2015

CLASS of 2015 Men’s Team Chris Harville (Rogersville/Missouri State) Steven Hill (Branson/Arkansas) Sam Singh (Ozark/Bradley) Mark Sparks (Neosho/Mizzou/Drury) Kevin Williams (Nevada/Mizzou) Women’s team Sara Bos Barnhart (Billings/Drury) Laura Granzow Buetow (Kickapoo/Denver/Canisius) Terianne Wolford Brown (Nixa/Mizzou) Alyson Young Hooten (Rogersville/Avila) Anita Rank Oplotnik (Lincoln/Missouri Southern)

Mark Fisher

The phone call came into Mark Fisher’s office in early 2003, and on the other end of the line was the longtime athletic director of Springfield Public Schools asking to go to lunch. At the time, Fisher was pretty content. He was 22 years into a successful high school basketball coaching career and, that year,… Read more »

Richard Hackett

Richard Hackett has spent 35 years on the pool deck at Drury University, shaping divers, building champions and quietly helping define one of the most dominant small-college swimming and diving programs in the country. Hackett is in his 35th season as the diving coach for Drury’s men’s and women’s swimming and diving program, which has… Read more »

Alex Hall

Perhaps the most memorable moment of his storied career was not on the court but just several feet from it. At halftime of the NCAA Division II national basketball championship game in 2013, with Drury University having trailed by 17 points at one point, Alex Hall was dead set on changing the narrative. “I remember… Read more »

Steve Hesser

It’s an iconic image that brings a smile to many in Springfield: The coach of the Drury University men’s basketball team, standing on a ladder, holding up a cut-down basketball net and showing it off. The photo is of Steve Hesser celebrating Drury winning the 2013 NCAA Division II national championship after the Panthers rallied… Read more »

Denny Hunt

On a bus ride home from a basketball game, with his senior season at Summersville High School coming to an end, Denny Hunt felt the real world tugging on his letter jacket. Going into business? Well, he had jotted that down as a potential college major. Yet that wasn’t him. And so he sought out… Read more »

Rick Jester

He’ll never forget the moment. All of 20 years old and having grown up in Springfield where basketball had long been the premier sport, Rick Jester walked into his family’s kitchen one Saturday and there was his old high school coach, Larry Atwood, enjoying a cup of coffee along wtih Jester’s dad. “Sit down here,”… Read more »

Shelly Jones

Jones accumulated more than 300 wins as a head coach, including at Parkview High School (134-37) in Springfield and then at Marshfield High School. At Parkview, she led the Lady Vikings to runner-up finishes in the Ozark Conference and Class 4 district play for three consecutive years. Sixteen players earned college scholarships. At Marshfield, she… Read more »

Dr. Troy Major

It would be no surprise if fellow sporting clays shooters happened to spot his prowess, looked at his remarkable scorecard and assumed he had had been around since the first shotgun was forged from steel. However, the story goes that Dr. Troy Major, despite growing up hunting and fishing and enjoying all that the Ozarks… Read more »

Tom Mast

He must have had a puzzled look on his face. A year after arriving as Springfield’s newest TV Sports Director, he got sent to Louisiana to cover what was anticipated to be Evangel University football’s first victory. Yet upon arriving to the field, well, we’ll let Tom Mast tell the rest of the story. “What… Read more »

Nyla Milleson

Up in north central Kansas, word reached a high school girls basketball coach that Glendale High School in Springfield, Missouri needed to fill the same role. This was 1992, weeks after Nyla Milleson had guided Junction City to a state third-place finish. Which already was quite a story. Seven years earlier, she had switched her… Read more »

Jim Morris

He is proof that you can write a great second chapter in life, that you’re never too old to take up a sport and that – who knows? – you can surge to success. The story goes that Springfield’s James “Jim” F. Morris was sitting in the balcony of Grace Methodist Church and not far… Read more »

Larry O’Reilly

Years ago, Larry O’Reilly sat with the great Stan Musial, the most iconic name in the St. Louis Cardinals’ rich history, and enjoyed the story that “Stan the Man” relayed that day. “I got to be friends with Stan, and he was so gracious and even pulled out his harmonica,” O’Reilly said, noting friend and… Read more »