In baseball, everybody’s got a story – some better than others. And when it comes to Al Nipper, he’s got a lot of good ones. Think he loved the game at an early age? A St. Louis Cardinals fan, he used to plot down $1.25 for a blue-marked GA ticket into old Busch Stadium and… Read more »
News
Year: 2018
Jim Otis
It’s almost as if a Hollywood script writer delivered it right to Frank Capra himself. How else to explain the career of Jim Otis? There he was at age 7 in a photo beside 1955 Heisman Trophy winner Howard “Hopalong” Cassidy of Ohio State. As a high school junior, with the headlights of teammates’ cars… Read more »
Ozark High School Baseball Program
Thumb through scrapbooks or yearbooks of Ozark High School baseball players, and it’s one of those sweet trips down Memory Lane. “Baseball Resumed” reads the headline tucked away in the 1975 Yearbook, accompanied with a collage of black-and-white photos. Four years later, in 1979, the team reached none other than the Final Four, and the… Read more »
Springfield-Greene County Park Board
In 2003, just three years after earning the Gold Medal for best public parks system in the country, the phone rang into the offices of the Springfield-Greene County Park Board. On the other end of the line was a representative from none other than Sports Illustrated. It still leaves officials shaking their heads in disbelief.… Read more »
Jacky Payne
This may be the epitome of Jacky Payne as a high school basketball coach: In 1985, in his first meeting with the Marshfield Blue Jays, he pointed to the empty walls and flat said they would one day hoist their own banners. “They probably thought I was crazy,” Payne said, explaining Marshfield hadn’t won much… Read more »
Anthony Peeler
In sports, rare is the athlete who makes people stop what they’re doing – even it’s important – and pause in awe. Sure, in basketball, there are dunkers and shooters and slick passers and what not. But about once a generation along comes somebody who does it all and does it with authority, leaving the… Read more »
Howard Richards
When he was younger, he grew up looking up the family tree at Uncle Ernie McMillan, an offensive lineman of the National Football League’s St. Louis Football Cardinals from 1961 to 1974, even though he loved baseball more. For Howard Richards, however, everything changed in the mid-1970s when Leon Anton, the football coach at St. Louis’ Southwest… Read more »
Lynnette Robinson
In August 1987, despite having never visited the Missouri State University campus, Lynnette Robinson pulled into Springfield with only a U-Haul and a dream. Truth is, others might have gasped and high-tailed it back home, given that her new boss, recently hired Lady Bears basketball coach Cheryl Burnett, needed an assistant coach to help carry… Read more »
Dan Rolfes
For some basketball coaches, they knew at an early age that they wanted to lead teams eventually. For many, it simply comes together by happenstance. Which makes Dan Rolfes’ story so incredible. There he was in college, trying to figure out what he wanted to do in life, when the fifth-grade little sister of his… Read more »
Tony Severino
The decorated walls and shelves of his rarely seen basement home office show a career defined by success. See the aged but colorful photo of football players hoisting him on their shoulders? That’s from his first state championship at Rockhurst High School. Not far away are framed newspaper stories, including one with a Kansas City… Read more »
Lee Smith
The story goes that he was discovered in the deep woods of Louisiana by former Negro Leagues manager-turned-scout Buck O’Neil and yet walked away from the game while in the minor leagues, unconvinced of the future for relief pitchers. Imagine that. Baseball was that close to never hearing of Lee Smith. Yes, that Lee Smith,… Read more »
Donn Sorensen
Years ago, recruiters would come calling and, in all honestly, everybody would have understood had Donn Sorensen declined. After all, his career had taken him to sunny San Diego, the complete opposite of his childhood on the snow-covered northern plains. Yet one offer piqued his interest. It was as the top executive of the Mercy… Read more »
Stockton High School Girls Basketball Program
In southwest Missouri, in the Cedar County town called Stockton, the girls basketball team has long galvanized the community. In fact, stand in the old gym, and one can imagine crowds packed elbow to elbow and roaring during state championship runs of the early 2000s. Over at the new high school, look to the left… Read more »
Steve Tappmeyer
A Gerald native who played on the 1974 Owensville High School state championship team, Tappmeyer compiled a 460-238 record (.659) coaching NCAA Division II men’s basketball from 1988 to 2013. That covered 21 seasons and a program-best 408 wins at Northwest Missouri State, where his teams reached 10 NCAA Tournaments, with two appearances in the… Read more »
Kurt Thompson
Sometimes, a job that you don’t pursue ends up being the spring-board to huge success. Which is why Kurt Thompson’s start as a head football coach seems almost to believe. Back in 1990, at age 23 and after his second season as an assistant coach at Webb City High School, Thompson’s phone rang one February… Read more »
Rick Todd
For 51 years, it was easy for Rick Todd to leave the house every morning and head off to work. And not simply because of his roles for the Herschend Family Entertainment Inc., which owns Silver Dollar City. Certainly, growing the company’s success and entertaining families was fun. However, along the way, he came to… Read more »