Once a Trojan, Always a Trojan

John A. Hays

Monsignor Edward Connolly, a native of Ireland and destined to be a legend in his own right, arrived in Monroe City in 1919 assigned with the task to open a catholic high school in the small northeast Missouri town. He stayed to lead both the parish and Holy Rosary High School for 55 years. Connolly cut a wide swath of respect and fear, the kind of man you do not laugh at, but he was also the kind you might even hesitate to laugh with, unless you were sure of his permission. 

The school became the town’s intergenerational glue. When the final graduating class marched out into the real world, the school had handed out its last of 668 diplomas. Graduation photos from years past — the final class graduated in 1966 — hang today framed in the main hallway of a brand-new elementary school building for anyone who feels nostalgic.

Monroe City is a well-worn farming community 15 minutes west of the historic Mississippi River town of Hannibal (of Samuel Clements fame) where the land begins to smooth out as it rolls west to the Great Plains and north to Canada on a mostly treeless path all the way to the North Pole. The town loops like a gray scar along an old rail line and late March has arrived with a greening of the flat land so bright it will soon force the eyes to squint. 

John A. Hayes, a 1966 Holy Rosary graduate said the death knoll sounded on a Sunday morning in February of 1966 when the high school closing was officially announced to the parish. There had been rumors of a closing floating for several years. It felt like the “big black cloud” hanging over the school had finally burst. But it was still a kick in the gut. Although Monroe City of the day exuded a distinct Capra-esque cordiality, there was to be no Hollywood ending. It felt unfair and non-ceremonial the way it happened—a 10-minute meeting the previous week between school officials and the Bishop of the Archdiocese of Jefferson City—closing a place that's meant so much to so many people. 

"The announcement was made to the Parish at church that Sunday morning” Hays says. “We students were told a couple of days before. There was a meeting that Monday of that week (of the closing announcement) for all the nuns and we were left in the classrooms without supervision. Some of us senior boys took the opportunity to do a little initiation with the freshman,” Hays recalls with a chuckle. “The next day all the students were called to a meeting with the parish priest, and we thought we were going to be in trouble for the initiation, but they told us the school was closing.”

For a moment the world of Holy Rosary barely moved, a tableau of sorrow and love and pain. Then it was time to end the pity party. When your parish has a grade school to save and there are plans being drawn up for a new church building, then you drop your bad attitude faster than first-period trig--even when you just know if given the chance you would have found a way. 

What next?

“Many people were bitter, some still to this day,” Hays remembers, sipping his morning coffee in the Monroe City farm implement store he has managed since his Holy Rosary graduation, minus one year in the late 1980’s when interest rates on farm loans were running 19% and foreclosures wreaked havoc on tractor sales. “I sold cars that one year, then we reorganized and got back in. Agriculture does not like high interest rates. Inflation, we can survive but not double-digit interest rates.” 

"But I never thought it would end like it did," Hays says of the 1966 Holy Rosary closing. “I guess it is like being on a great basketball team, year after year. Even while you're having the time of your life, you know it can't go on forever, so you just try not to think about it."  Like a callow novice scorched by the Vegas desert sun and $2 blackjack tables, the Holy Rosary parishioners, who had been steadfast for over a half century in their support of their beloved high school, felt knee capped by faceless bureaucrats in high positions. They were not even given a chance to save the school. The numbers, they were told, just did not add up.  

Was there talk of taping up ankles and going at the church leadership to challenge their decision, I ask? No, says Hays. “That is not the way being Catholic works.” Obedience to the church hierarchy’s authority is absolute and a major tenet of the faith. “Challenging a decision made by church officials is just not something that was going to happen.” The ethical upside always wins is his point. “The parish didn’t like it, but we accepted it and moved on.” 

Even Father Connolly, after 55 years, had no say or recourse. A local newspaper story of the time acknowledged his sad acceptance of the closing. The parish belonged to the church, he noted, and he would not be a houseguest to outstay his welcome. 

Once the high school was gone, “all the parish energy went into making the elementary school successful. If anybody could do anything to      help, they did it,” Hays recalls.  Today, the Holy Rosary school has a new building and enrollment has held steady for the past decade. Tests scores are high and the pride that parishioners have in the school is palpable. When students graduate the 8th grade, the transition to the public high school is mostly seamless. 

With all the problems of 1960’s small-town survival that Monroe City had to endured, the closing of Holy Rosary evoked, understandably, a potpourri of discomforting reactions. But Hays says after the initial shock, the parish rallied. “We needed to keep the doors open at the elementary school and we had to do it at a time that the number of Sisters we had for teachers was declining. We now had to pay teacher salaries. We needed funding and we needed a lot of people to contribute.” Schools like Holy Rosary do not produce donor bases that pump millions of dollars into their endowments. “People gave what they could and gave until it hurt,” he recalls. But the school transitioned well to an elementary building only and today 57 years later, Hays points with pride, thrives. 

Going back to the days of Father Connolly, Holy Rosary has boasted of its athletic teams, and still does today. Legend was that Connolly was a friend of Notre Dame iconic football coach Knute Rockne and would once a year attend a Fighting Irish game as the guest of the famous coach. Connolly believed in winning and made demands that his Holy Rosary Trojans respond in kind. He often wore a lucky hat with the Notre Dame logo of “ND,” which he said stood for No Defeats. “We are a big sports town,” Hays says, “and we have a great tradition of athletic success at both Holy Rosary and at the public junior high and when they (merge) in the ninth grade, the high school teams do very well. Sports help bring the two schools together, for sure.” For the first season in the post consolidated era, 1967, the Monroe City Panthers started two senior basketball players who had suited up as juniors for the now defunct Trojans.

Sister Sue

Sister Suzanne Walker, a Holy Rosary 1964 grad and all-conference basketball selection herself, has for the past 47 years labored in love for her alma mater. She retired this past spring from her role as principal. She is another Holy Rosary legend. “I just know it is time for me to step aside,” she told me last spring.  Sister Sue was for almost a half century for the Holy Rosary community, the face, the spirit, and the keeper of the faith; always the rock, always the leader. The community has embraced Sister Sue, as she is known by all, because she is like the school itself: parochial, proud, tough, and determined to win in the end. In the local rural vernacular, always a work horse, never a show horse. 

In 2016, the parish raised the funds to build a new school. It was a Herculean task, just the kind Sister Sue seeks out. The fundraising and the successful completion, under budget, is fondly known today amongst the parish faithful as the “Miracle on Locust Street.” 

“We needed a new building for two reasons,” Walker says. “The old school was getting to the point that the maintenance could not be maintained without huge remodeling expenses. We had no handicap access. The heating system was falling apart. But a new school also sent a signal, ‘Holy Rosary is here to stay. We are not going away,”’ she says with pride.

School closings are often dark bookmarks in a community’s history. It strips a town of a critical part of its identity. It comes down to kids and to have kids in a community you need jobs for their parents. “You gotta feed ‘em.” If there are no jobs, it doesn’t matter how effective and decorated the school is.   And like many post-World War II farm communities, Monroe City in 1966 was bleeding population. The 1960’s were tough on the nation’s farmers, as were the 1980s. It was especially hard on the local agriculture, says Hays. “When Holy Rosary closed, foreclosure rates were up, and the same thing happened again in the 80’s.”

When in one year nearly 100 Holy Rosary students shifted over to the public high school, Hays notes, the stress now placed on its resources was significant. “They needed to build, and they needed more resources and teachers,” Hays says. “Mr. (Galen) Lankford (long time MC Superintendent of Schools) worked very closely with our school board, to make it work. Coach Dan Mudd went over to the public school. Throw in that Washington school had just recently closed its elementary school and integrated its students with the white elementary school, and Monroe City school district was now (bursting) at the seams.”

John A. says the HR class of 1966 never fails to organize legacy “5” and “0” year reunions. The 50th reunion had over 60% of the class in attendance. When the DJ hit is just right that night, Simon & Garfunkel and The Sounds of Silence or the Mamas & The Papas strumming Monday, Monday - a step back in time required only the closing of one’s eyes and the years just peeled away. It was a magical return to a simpler time. 

“Most of us did not have cars,” Hays says, “so we didn’t cruise. We hung out downtown at the Creamery, the Monroe Dairy. After ball games it was packed with both Monroe City and Holy Rosary students.” A buck and four bits would get you a tenderloin, French fries, and a shake. And a dime would hold court on the pin ball machine, the bells clanging and the score twirling. The cool guys knew how to “jack” the tilt and play for free. 

When Holy Rosary closed, a key component to the Monroe City community was yanked away. The school was not only a place to provide faith-based education, but it served a larger civic function.  Think of a 1960’s version of Cheers and that was Holy Rosary High School, where everybody knows your name. Hays remembers feeling “at home” there; it’s where he “fit right in.”  He says to this day he has reoccurring dreams of a high school basketball career that ended over a half century ago. His coach, Dan Mudd, told me that Hays was a player who could sense what his team needed most and supply it without muss or fuss. The famous late St. John's coach, Lou Carnesecca, said he wanted a team of Supreme Court justices, players who never gave anything away with their expressions, and that says Coach Mudd was also John A., the last of the long line of Coach Mudd’s scrappy back court players to prowl the Monsignor Edward Connolly Gymnasium. According to the old coach his hard-nosed guards could have run a fast break in a broom closet. 

“I just can’t get the place out of my system. There were about 25 people in my graduating class, and we were all family, still are,” said Hays.  Even though he was a member of the last graduating class and would avoid the trauma of finishing his high school career in a foreign public-school setting, the closure “was hard and traumatic for my class, as well.”

1966 Holy Rosary Trojans

Hays says the life of a Holy Rosary grad belies and validates a Holy Rosary education - in the foundation of industry and humility on which it was built and is maintained. On that long ago day in 1966, a community of believers that loved unconditionally it’s no-frills bare bones budget high school, was trapped staring down both barrels of a shotgun when the leaders they had faithfully served pulled the trigger. The blast shattered dreams. 

That may be true, taking the wide perspective of it all, but Monroe City is small-town Middle America, hovering in the embattled grain belt of the Midwest sporting a work ethic as pervasive as the prairie wind and as clinging as the pasture cockleburs that stick to the legs of a pair of work Levis. This work ethic is a generational legacy and that takes born character. It's not something you can sprinkle each morning on a guy's Cheerios. 

There are always chores at hand for the Holy Rosary congregation, mostly a farming way of life to be claimed every spring and reclaimed every fall. Parts might be lost, but they'll be found again. Life here endures. When all is said and done, Hays proclaims, it is a congregation of survivors. “We never quit on the church or our school, even when we were hurt, and we never will.” 

Once a Trojan, always a Trojan.

 

An Eternal Flame

 

1969 MC Football

We never know how high we are
  Till we are called to rise;
And then, if we are true to plan,
  Our statures touch the skies— Emily Dickinson

Think of it this way: the Monroe City, MO Washington school has been dead more years than it lived, and here you have Howard Pruitt with a monk like resolve pouring over old newspapers and yearbooks. His determination is rooted in documentation. Get it written down! When he is called home by his Lord, Pruitt intends to leave this earth a gift; the eternal flame of the Washington School that for 40 years educated the “colored” students of Monroe City. The school was finally closed sometime in the mid 1960’s. Even the exact date of complete racial desegregation of the Monroe City Public Schools is open to debate. 

Monroe City’s Washington School is a story of eventual triumph, but still, the reality is it was a flower grown from poisonous soil—the segregation laws of 20th-century America. "People need to know that it was the law back then," says Pruitt. And there is a modern burden to bear, “woke” culture be damned. "A lot of good people back then didn't question.” 

Searching for ghosts is not easy but there's a spiritually uplifting Dickensian touch to all this - what Pruitt is attempting - but there's also a sense of immense pressure he battles. He is nearing 70 years of age and as he says, “we are passing fast.” An old African proverb states that when an old man dies, a library dies with him. “So many stories I have not heard,” Pruitt says with a sad shake of his head, “and they need to not only be heard but recorded. That keeps me up at night.” If you have ever called Monroe City home, regardless of your racial makeup, you owe Howard Pruitt a big thank you.

But that anonymity - out of sight, out of mind - was, and still is, the essence of Monroe City's ignored “Colored” school; the nameless faces of a school without even a yearbook to record their mere existence. They were neighbors and boyfriends and sons and nephews, and they had dads and moms and sisters and brothers and teachers and that special girl, and the link that bonded it all still pulsates through the heart and in the blood of now aging alums like Howard Pruitt. It is a unique confluence of dignity and history, and Pruitt sells it all to me with the wry smile of a prophet. 

Until the fall of 1965, Pruitt attended the Washington School. “I started school at Washington in 1958 and went through the 6th grade. Then I moved over to the White school.”  1958 - the tail years of the Eisenhower administration, as Martin Luther King Jr. was marching in the South and an inchoate and aborning civil rights movement was beginning to spread across America.

The landmark Supreme Court decision of 1954, Brown v Topeka Board of Education made segregated schools based on race unconstitutional. Pruitt entered the 7th grade, for the first time sitting in a classroom next to white students, 11 years after Brown v Board.

The Monroe City Public School District began providing high school level education for its Black students in 1938. As required by the State law of the day, Black and White students were taught in separate buildings. Beginning in 1948, Monroe City Black high school aged students were bussed to the all-Black Douglas High School in Hannibal, MO. In 1955, the Hannibal Public Schools made the decision to abide by the Brown v Board ruling and completely integrate its schools, thus closing Douglas High. 

Many districts in Missouri ignored and/or challenged the Brown v Board ruling in court. Monroe City chose a hybrid path. The high school was integrated, as the law required, but the district’s Black elementary students were still, until 1965, segregated at Washington. 

In 1956, Monroe City High School graduated its first Black students, four in total. Donald Scott was one. He played on the varsity basketball team. He became the first in his family to graduate from college. He earned his degree in 1960 from Lincoln University and joined the US Army. Thirty-one years later he retired with the rank of Brigadier General. 

Upon retiring from active duty in 1992, Scott served as the chief operating officer and chief of staff for the mayor of Atlanta. He later became the founding director and chief executive officer of the AmeriCorps National Civilian Corp. He was in 1997 appointed by President Bill Clinton to the role of the Deputy Librarian of Congress. He retired for good in 2006.

I taught in Monroe City for five years and never heard the story of Donald Scott. And we question why we need a black history month. “And tell him about how you led the protest at the high school for a black history class, Howard. 1970 and Howard is protesting and demanding a black history class at Monroe City High School,” teases classmate and lifelong friend Brenda Wilkerson Harris. “You were something, even back then, Howard Pruitt.”

Harris has joined us for a lunch meeting in Columbia, MO. Both she and Pruitt have called the host city for the University of Missouri home for over 40 years.  Harris is now retired after a career as an office administrative assistant. She has raised two adult children and has been single since her second husband passed away in 1984.

Howard Pruitt and Brenda Harris

Black children’s lives all too often become a cliché of criminal pathology: absentee father, mother struggling with mental health issues and drug addiction, no food in the fridge, neighborhoods of casual violence - a spiderweb capable of ensnaring the most innocent. Pruitt says Monroe City was different. “This was a good place to grow up. When we integrated, sure we had our share of knuckleheads who didn’t want us there, would do the drive-by insults. But we got things straight, in time. They learned we would only take so much. A lot of people were good to us. I remember our junior high principal, Mr. Minor, that first year went well out of his way to make us feel welcome, to check on us, see how we were doing. We loved our football coach, Coach Welker. Not one teacher in all the years I was in the White school treated me unfairly because of my skin (color)."

"My grandfather, Jesse Robinson, was a strong disciplinarian," says Pruitt. “They lived right across the railroad tracks form us. I also had a stepfather and a mother who took a strong role in raising me. In those days, in the black community of Monroe City, there were plenty of eyes to keep watch on us." Any youthful transgressions that were not within the norms of the family standards were dealt with swiftly. "We all had a time schedule, curfews” says Pruitt. “We had lunch at the same time. We had dinner at the same time. Don't be late or you didn't eat. We all ate at a big table and talked about school and what was happening in world events. We all dressed up neat—my grandfather father was a clean, neat dresser and a proud man—and we all went to church on Sunday together. We were a family."

Harris has similar memories of a childhood that was long on both structure and discipline, but also love and support. “The black community of Monroe City took care of its own,” she recalls. Your children were your purpose in life, she says. “We would have been terrified to ever do anything that would bring disrespect or shame to our family, to our parents.”  She initially attended college at Northeast Missouri State University in nearby Kirksville, MO but then dropped out to follow a boyfriend to first Iowa and then Chicago. In 1974 she moved to her current home of Columbia.

Like in many small towns in the 1960’s, athletics played a key role in successfully integrating Monroe City High School. Think, “Remember the Panthers.” Howard Pruitt says with noticeable pride that the 1969 Panther football team started multiple Blacks on defense, sometimes as many as nine, Pruitt being one. They spent that summer before his junior year preparing, did enough pushups to power a steam engine. They were ready. “We came within one game of playing for state.” The following year Pruitt was team’s captain and the school’s homecoming king.

"When Holy Rosary was still open," Pruitt recalls, "we had to walk past their school as we went from the south side to Washington school. Some of them would taunt us with slurs and insults. There were a group of brothers who were the leaders and one of them was my age. We were outnumbered so we just kept walking. When we got to high school Washington and Holy Rosary are both now closed and the first day of high school football practice, we are teammates. The first day we run the "Hamburger" drill and I make sure I am opposite him. We got things straight really quick."

The Hamburger drill is legendary amongst any male who played high school football in the 1950s, 1960 or 1970s. Sometimes also called the "Oklahoma" drill, it was simple and brutal. Two blocking dummies 15 feet or so apart, one blocker one tackler and a ball carrier. The battle was up front between the blocker and the tackler. No rules. Man on Man. Nowhere to hide. It was as macho as it got and often coaches would use it on the first day of the pre-season to measure toughness and shame those lacking it. 

"I wouldn't say after that day that all was forgotten, but we now knew we were teammates and eventually we became friends."

Still, Pruitt does not shy away from pointing out that such obvious discrimination was the root of Jim Crow and we Caucasian baby boomers, bless our pastoral soul, are quick to offer a tidy and reassuring narrative to distance the pure evil of Jim Crow. It's a tale that reflects how we like to think of our current selves, as a society forever progressive if not yet perfect, and we conveniently conjure up ennobling roles for whites as well as blacks. It serves the purpose of validating our self-righteous indignation - but not much else. Pruitt says, such a spin ignores one undeniable fact - color it as we might, there will always be pain at the heart of the story of those who endured Jim Crow.  You learn to smile while your lip is bleeding. 

"No grave can hold this body down," said Jesse Jackson at the funeral of Jackie Robinson. "It belongs to the ages." Ed Talton is the son of a Washington graduate. His father, Cliff, became the first African American police officer in the town’s history. A decade ago, Ed became the first African American full time male teacher in the Monroe City school district. Five years before that he became the first elected school board member of color. Today Talton is the district’s high school principal. He has trailblazed a lot of paths. Talton tells Pruitt, Pruitt says, it is a worthy battle he is waging, fighting to keep the spirit of Washington alive, but also one that does not resonate with the offspring of those who never suffered the indignity of segregation. “They do not know what it was like to be forced to sit in the balcony at the movies or to not be allowed in certain parts of town after sunset,” Pruitt states. He remembers. So does Alice Smith.

Alice Jones Smith is a 1975 graduate of Monroe City High School. She attended the Washington School through the third grade. In 1966, Washington School was closed, and Smith was assigned for 4th grade to the previously all white Monroe City Elementary School.

The 1954 landmark Brown v. Topeka Board of Education US Supreme Court decision was not fully implemented in Monroe City until 1966, twelve years after the fact. In my research I found the only other school district in Missouri in 1966, besides Monroe City, that was still defying the federal law was Charleston, a small southeast Missouri town a rock's throw away from Mississippi.

Why did Monroe City hold out for so long? The high school accepted its first black students in 1956. The district had no choice. The Hannibal School District had in 1956 immediately implemented the federal law set forth by Brown v Board by closing its segregated all-black Douglas High School, to where Monroe City had for a decade bussed its Black high school aged students. So why did Monroe City keep Washington school open for Black elementary students for over a decade?

I heard from several whites in Monroe City that the district had given black families a choice and most wanted to keep Washington open and segregated. Ms. Smith was adamant and irritated in that this story is patently false and has been told for too long. "That is not true," she told me. "Maybe that makes some (whites) feel good today," she theorizes on what she sees as an attempt at historical revisionism. "We were never given a choice. We were told we had to go to Washington," recalls Smith.

Alice Smith

The School Board had its hand played for them, Smith says, pursuant to its black high school students when Douglas shut down. "There were not enough high school age students for Monroe to have its own high school, so they had to integrate (the high school) in '56. But with Washington, they made a conscious decision to keep the elementary black and white kids from sitting in class together. That is not something people in Monroe City like today to hear, but it is true."

After her graduation, Smith moved to Springfield, IL. She was hired by the State of Illinois in May 1976 as an entry level clerk typist. She retired in May 2012 as a department supervisor. Over the years she took as many classes and received as much advanced training as was made available to her, as she moved up the state bureaucratic ladder.

Harris, like her friends and classmates Pruitt and Smith also remembers the slights. “There was a restaurant in town that it was well known they did not serve blacks. Our parents were always on the outlook for trouble, didn’t want us causing any. 'Stay away from there,’ they would warn us. But you know how young people are.  A group of us in high school one day just went in a set down. We were told we would not be served but we said we are not leaving until you do. Finally, they did and that was the end of it. Crumbled that quickly.” By that time, the early 70’s, most to the town, Harris recalls, had accepted that the old ways were done. “The physical barriers may have fell,” she recalls, “but the social separation remained. In many ways, still does.”

Today, Pruitt is retired from the University of Missouri and has lived in Columbia, MO since 1979. He stays busy, as he approaches his 70th year, working three days a week as a life coach through the federal program Job Point. He is also the driving force behind the Washington School Alumni Association. “Too many have no idea that there ever was a Washington School. It is part of who we are. It needs to be remembered,” he says. The Alumni Association allows Pruitt to honor an institution he loved. "We need this," he says. 

This is what segregation looked like, Pruitt says. “A part of me is sad to see it. I think about our people born after segregation ended and how the things, they take for granted, and I get upset, because I never want to forget what our people went through. It's sad, but lifts me up in determination to keep working, keep asking and keep recording."

To borrow from the teachings of racial activist W. E. B. Du Bois, the memory of Washington School and its alum deserve, Pruitt says, "respect, redemption and recognition." Many were solid citizens who made Monroe City a thriving community, but they were born too soon to be appreciated.  

“Ed (Talton) knows his dad’s legacy, how he changed Monroe City for the better. But it came with a price. There are many good white people in Monroe City, people who have been friends my entire life, who do not want to be reminded of segregation. Who just want it to be forgotten and buried. But if we do that, then we also bury Washington school, and I cannot let that happen. Pretty or not, it is part of who we are today.”

Alice Smith at various times, due to her race, was denied a toilet, a hotel room, an education, a living, her very humanity. Smith says those who didn't suffer the indignity of Jim Crow, both black and white, just don't get it. "Even many of our younger blacks in Monroe City don't understand the deep symbolic hurt of Jim Crow that those of us who lived it still feel. We need to keep the memory of Washington School, the good and the bad, alive (because) we don’t ever want to go back there.”

Is it fair to expect today's younger black leaders, those who were not even born before 1954, to carry a torch for a memory that is seen by many whites as unnecessarily upsetting and destabilizing? Do the leaders of black society carry an unfair burden not placed on white leaders? Michael Jordan was intentionally non-political and many black leaders, Jim Brown one of the most vocal, criticized him as too greedy and lacking social responsibility. Why didn't he spend more time in the inner cities fighting for a better life for the people of color trapped there, spread some of his Nike largesse around? Maybe fair, maybe not, but I recall no one ever ripping into Larry Bird for not spending his hours away from basketball demonstrating against the poverty and disfunction in his native white Appalachia.

Monroe City recently commissioned the painting of a downtown outdoor mural. Pruitt says that a consistent criticism he heard from the town’s black community was that Washington school was not recognized. His response was if you want a seat at the table and one is not offered, then bring your own silverware and set it yourself. "A lot of people come to me with great ideas, but most of them don't follow through," he says. That is not Pruitt. He vows to never lose his passion, “for making sure these men and women of Washington school receive their due." For Pruitt, this is a very personal mission.

Howard Pruitt is not afraid to voice his opinion. Outspoken men like Pruitt would be horribly naive to think everyone is going to agree with them. And if you voice that opinion with any degree of strength, your opposition will most often respond in kind.

Newsman Lester Holt had a line about politician and civil right activist John Lewis and how he attacked racism the way the great ones did, out of pure hate. I don't feel that Pruitt's obsession with the legacy of Washington school is powered with hate, but there is, I sense, quiet anger in him. His research is an act of integrity to sooth the anger. To think anything else would be as wrong as to assume he resents his hometown and his upbringing. He does not. I know because I asked him. If you want memories to last, he says, "you bring them out of the dark."

When 2 + 2 Does not Equal 4

There are mistakes that are inexcusable. This is one. But an honest mistake may be forgivable. This is one.

Cooter vs. Principia has become a Facebook cause célèbre, taking on a life of its own. Principia, MO High School won last weekend the Missouri Class 2 boys’ basketball quarterfinal game played between the two at the Farmington Civic Center, 46-43 in overtime. 

The problem was that in the second quarter Cooter scored two points that were credited in both the official scorebook and on the scoreboard to Principia. The mistake was verified by the TV feed of the game. The Missouri State High School Activities Association (MSHSAA), who administrates the state tournament, admitted in a post-game news release the mistake had been made. But the scoring error was not changed in time, despite Cooter’s in game protests, so even through Cooter put the ball through the proper basket for two more points in regulation than Principia, they went home, and Principia went on to the promised land of next weekend’s final four. 

To say Cooter did not go quietly would be putting it mildly. They filed an appeal with MSHSAA. Their coach declared on Facebook that he would not stop fighting for his team. There were veiled accusations of “elitism.” I would have suggested to all that before such action they read the National High School Federation basketball rule book and the MSHSAA Handbook.

Sportswriter Tom Davis went so far on a website called SEMOball.com, to taunt the claims of superior Christian morality he attributed to Principia. “The above quote is a statement by The Principia School in St. Louis, which boasts of being ‘The Best Christian High School in Missouri’ on the home page of its website. However, both of those claims ring hollow throughout the Bootheel in light of what transpired on Friday.”

Davis continues, “It would be a travesty enough if the situation ended there, however, Principia, which remember, is ‘The Best Christian High School in Missouri,’ has chosen to disregard the foundational aspects which it publicly boasts. Character ‘is at the core’ of Principia’s beliefs? What level of character does it take to compete in the State Finals knowing full well that your team was awarded a quarterfinal game through an acknowledged mistake?”

Mr. Davis’s observations are long on hyperbole and the tossing of red meat to his southeast Missouri base, but woefully short on factual context. He believes that Principia is setting a poor example as a Christian school by not forfeiting the game or at the least, agree to replay the game. That is both unfair and irrelevant. Unfair in that Principia is bound by the policies and regulations of MSHSAA, democratically voted into by-laws by Cooter, Principia, and 533 other dues paying MSHSAA members. Even if Principia would agree to play a “do over,” MSHSAA policies would not allow for it. The policy written by the National Federation of High Schools and used by every state in the union except Texas is simple - when the officials leave the floor, the game is over. If member schools don’t like the policy, they have the power to vote in something new. 

Irrelevant in that MSHSAA policies do not allow Principia to initiate any action that would allow Cooter play in the final four. Even if Principia on principal refused to play in this weekend’s state semifinal game, by MSHSAA policy the semifinal game Principia was scheduled to play in would be declared a forfeit and the opponent advanced to the state championship game. And Cooter would still be sitting on the sidelines. 

Mr. Davis’s ready, fire, aim approach is missing its mark, badly.

The Cooter incessant presence on this week’s social media showed their fans justifiable frustration, but also their lack of knowledge of the due process involved for this type of situation. Julia Lynn posted in a caffeinated rant Tuesday on Facebook, “I’m not mad at Principia other than knowing the actual score and knowing that they are a Christian school they should have said we know rules are in place but we will cooperate and do whatever you believe is right regardless of the rules or not we 100 percent back your decision. They did not and I will maybe be wrong.” I would like to see the results of an administrator that tried to follow this advice. 

And then there are the really off the rail conspiracy theories that began as the week progressed and now fester. One southeast Missouri “journalist” insinuated that it was the rich elitest of St. Louis County, represented by Principia, conspiring to keep what he referred to as “Swamp” East Missouri from their due constitutional right to play in the final four. Seriously? What is next, an Alex Jones Game Day podcast at the state tournament to expose a pedophile ring run by MSHSAA out of a Columbia pizzeria? 

The adult volunteers running the scorers’ table at the Farmington Civic Center, and the three amateur officials who are the ultimate enforcer of the rules, I am sure, feel terrible about their mistake. But, there is no “woke” conspiracy driving Cooter’s misfortune. What we have is human error, unfortunate, but nothing more. 

At risk of sounding like CNN, I wanted to share this inside anonymous source who has firsthand information on the controversy: "Here is what is many don’t fully understand. The two points in question weren’t the two free throws. Those were in both books. When the officials were notified, they brought all three books together and the official book and Prin book matched. The Cooter book was right. When the lead official asked them when the extra basket was scored the Cooter coach couldn’t give him any information to go with. Officials used their best discretion at that point and went with the two books that matched. The officials didn’t doubt that there was a potential mistake, but they had nothing solid to go with. The protest procedure is rules based and the coach must call timeout and use his 10 minuets to settle. Some would argue the book check was the protest and it couldn’t be validated at that time, so they moved on. I am guessing that by declaring a 'protest' that Cooter felt someone would fix it after the fact."

MSHSAA will tell you they have never lost a legal court case brought against them. It is a voluntary organization that Cooter has agreed to join and its bylines are voted on by the member schools. As long as MSHSAA follows their guidelines and policies, and they do, they will never lose a legal challenge in court and if it comes to it, they will not lose this one, either.

On all the internet stories I have read about this controversy, and there are many, not one correctly stated the National Federation policy for procedure in such a situation. What the rule says is that any correctable error (and crediting the wrong team with a basket is one of five) must be corrected by the game officials before the clock starts after the first dead ball after the mistake was made. (RULE 2 - SECTION 10 ART. 2} When the points were mistakenly given to Principia, early in the second quarter, the next time the clock stopped, the correction had to be made before the clock started again. It was not. Cooter claims they tried but the official scorekeeper refused to budge, and the game officials, with the ultimate say, accept his/her decision. End of story. There is not appeal. There is not protest. And for good reason for the chaos on-going appeals would create. 

Here is one example. If you are from Licking you will love this story.  Wes Holmes ran our scoreboard clock. Wes is the most consciousness, honest, fair man you will ever meet. He is one of the finest high school science teachers I ever worked with, an all-around stand-up guy. He is also a classic science geek nerd. My first home game coaching at Licking we are milking a five-point lead against Willow Springs with under two minutes to play. We inbound the ball, but the scoreboard clock is not running. Wes is looking at his wristwatch. I yell at him to start the clock and he shows me an open hand with the palm up signaling for me to wait. He then starts the clock, looks at me and says (this is burned into my forever memory), “earlier this evening I failed in my duties by not turning on the clock in a timely manner and I am now simply compensating for my earlier negligence.” I wanted to strangle him. Later I calmly explained that we do not make up for mistakes in the middle of the game, especially when we are winning.

Mistakes by officials are not accepted as generously as errors by players or coaches. It is a tough job. Before the ball is thrown up, every official must accept they have little control over the fairness of the evaluation of their work. So, make sure the fly is zipped, hustle and radiate enthusiasm – and pray to never be involved in a mess like happened in Farmington. 

Most controversy over their performance will be arbitrary. Was it a block or a charge? White touched it last or was it black? Seldom is the problem as deductive as it was in Farmington. A judgement error such as a miscalled over and back violation is to a case of miscalculating of the score what stubbing your toe is to locking yourself out of the house at night during a blizzard. The first is merely painful, and the game goes on; the other suggests some defect of character or intellect, or even darker, a deep conspiracy against “us”. The rare scoring error committed at such a critical juncture as happened in Farmington, has an enduring grandeur to it. And that is what has happened with this controversy. 

The team that scores the most points should always win the game. On this night they didn’t, and you can’t help but feel for the poor kids at Cooter. To err is human, to forgive divine, and—as the Cooter/Principia game so tellingly reveals—to forget maybe impossible.