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 »
News
Sport: Swimming and Diving
Jim Aziere
On a warm afternoon in early spring of 1965, Jim Aziere ran a 5-mile warmup on the back roads of Central Missouri before track practice at the University of Central Missouri. He set a goal to accomplish what few people do in a lifetime. From that moment, he began leaving footprints everywhere he went. Students… Read more »
1985-1996, 2004-2009 Eras Blue Springs High School Swimming
Dedication. Work ethic. Attention to detail. Those are the words and phrases used by those close to the Blue Springs High School Girls Swimming & Diving program. And it really shouldn’t be a surprise, either. You don’t win seven state titles and post five runner-up finishes during two distinct eras without those traits running rampant… Read more »
Steve Boyce
He took on two monumental coaching tasks in high school swimming in Missouri – first in St. Louis, where the Parkway South program had had almost no success, and the next in Springfield, where a Hall of Famer left him the keys to the competitive Glendale program. Steve Boyce stared down both and, it seems,… Read more »
David Colt
For the past 24 years, David Colt has held the position of Head Athletic Trainer and Assistant Professor at Northwest Missouri State University in Maryville. Responsible for the health care of 390 athletes in 15 sports, he also devotes much of his time to the classroom teaching various college courses. Colt became a Certified Athletic… Read more »
Michelle Langsford Dickemann
It’s almost as if a Hollywood writer penned the script for a box-office smash. In fact, you can almost envision the movie trailer hyping it this way: Michelle Langsford Dickemann wasn’t your average swimmer. She soared in the pool, becoming the first girl from Springfield to win a high school state championship and eventually told… Read more »
Erin Dolan Edminister
She began competing in swimming at age 6 and, by the time she had graduated high school, college coaches had taken notice. At one point, she verbally committed to compete for the University of Milwaukee. However, Erin Dolan Edminister looked toward southwest Missouri, to NCAA Division II Drury University. “Drury was the only Division II… Read more »
Ginny Fuldner
Ginny Fuldner accomplished the ultimate in the world of amateur sports at the 1964 Olympic Games in Tokyo, where she won a gold medal in the 400m freestyle, which she also recorded a new Olympic record. In addition to her gold medal at the 1964 games, she won a bronze medal in the 100m backstroke.… Read more »
Ellen Gale Hopkins Green
One of Missouri’s earliest premier swimmers, Ellen Gale Hopkins Green shattered virtually every swimming record known during her heyday in the 1930’s. From 1934 to 1939 won a total of 62 individual titles: her best year, 1937, saw her capture 20 individual medals and a National Junior AAU Championship. Most impressive was her 1937 time… Read more »
Jim Halliburton
He has been in and around competitive swimming for so long that folks may assume the H in water’s chemical name, h2o, stands for “Halliburton.” Yes, Jim Halliburton has given his life the sport. Not that anyone is surprised. After all, he went undefeated as a Ladue High School swimmer decades ago, broke Big Ten… Read more »
1979-1999 Era Hickman High School Girls Swimming
Successful coaches are often measured by the same metric: winning. How many championships do you have? What’s your record? But if you’ve ever spent time in the athletics arena, you know winning is a small notch on the measuring stick of success. And championships alone never tell the entire story. Oh, sure, winning matters. It’s… Read more »
Kansas City Corporate Challenge
When the United States boycotted the Moscow Summer Olympics in 1980, the man who cared deeply for public parks and recreation in Kansas City’s largest counties sprung into action. No, Leon Younger didn’t save the Games. Instead, he called several businesses and created what he called the Corporate Olympics, with Kansas City-area businesses entering employees… Read more »
Lafayette (Wildwood) High School Girls Swimming & Diving Program
It all began with incremental goals. Win 10 meets in a season here, place in the top three at the conference, maybe qualify relays and individuals for the state meet and so forth. In other words, the rise of one of the most storied high school girls swimming programs in the Show-Me State had humble… Read more »
Dr. Chris Leslie
A graduate of Jefferson City High School, Southern Methodist University and Kirksville College of Osteopathic Medicine, Dr. Leslie was the team physician for the Camdenton R-III School District for 23 years. While providing on-field care for the school’s athletes, his practice soon expanded to providing medical care to players’ families as well. Additionally, he worked… Read more »
Dora Quinn Arney Meikle
Walk by the indoor swimming pool at College of the Ozarks, and it may seem like just another athletic facility. In reality, it’s steeped in history – as the place where Dora Quinn Arney Meikle began to make her mark as a pioneer of women’s athletics. “Women athletes today maybe wouldn’t realize all we went… Read more »
Bruce Melin
Melin received both his bachelor’s (1944) and master’s (1948) degrees from the University of Minnesota. He joined the faculty and athletic staff of Washington University in 1949 and served for 28 years before retiring in 1977. He continued working as an athletic trainer for some time after his retirement. In 1986, Melin received the Washington… Read more »