DAN MUDD AND THE 1962 HR TROJANS

The town has changed. The game has changed. Almost everything has changed really. When Dan Mudd played basketball at Holy Rosary High School in Monroe City, MO the gym ceiling hung at 14 feet above the well-worn floor and had sizzling steam radiators on a wall under each goal. Forget about any shot farther out than 10 feet unless you banked a laser off the metal backboard. And a hard drive to the basket without the ability to stop on a dime ended with a scorched butt.

When he returned to work at the school in 1959, a new gym had been built, one good enough to host a Regional Tournament. Mudd coached the basketball team, the baseball team, taught history and hygiene, and he made $300.33 a month. He held the job until the spring of 1966 when the school unexpectedly closed its doors.

What is the same is a now 85-year-old man who has remained not only true to his town and his profession but also to himself and his family, a consistency of character shaped by a burning ambition to lead young athletes. If you will listen close you can still hear it in his words. 

I had not spoken to Coach Mudd in almost 25 years.

“Doubt I have much that can be of any help to you,” Coach Mudd said upon greetings, “but let’s see what we can do.” We talked for over two hours.  

Until 1966, the Trojans of the Monroe City Catholic Church Holy Rosary fielded their own high school team, one with long and rich traditions. Many, now aging alumni keep the pride alive. The team Purple and Gold can trace their basketball playing roots as far back as the public school. In 1926, Monsignor E. Connolly led the first recorded edition of the Trojans.

Connolly, a native of Ireland, became a legend in his own right, arriving to open the school in 1919 and leading the parish for 55 years. In 1966, when the final graduating class marched out into the real world, the school had handed out its last of 668 diplomas.

Connolly left and indomitable mark on many Monroe City youngsters. One was Dan Mudd.

“Father Connelly was a man who just loved athletics,” Coach Mudd states, “If you would go over and check the trophy case in the old school, you will find pictures of him coaching football at Holy Rosary at what had to be back in the 1920s. I remember he was also a great golfer. He was the kind of guy that a young boy looks up to, turns into a hero.”

Seventy-five years later Mudd still recalls vividly the first time the Priest showed an interest in him - and it changed the trajectory of his life. “When I was in 5th grade,” Mudd recently shared with me, “My brother bought me a baseball glove for my birthday. We were out in the open field at recess and Fr. Connelly had a fungo bat,” Mudd remembers. “And I had my new glove. He said, ‘get out there in the field and let's see if you can catch a flyball.’ I was hooked after that. I knew I wanted to be a coach and I knew I wanted to be a teacher, just like Father Connolly.”

The Trojan basketball legacy is a shroud of myths. Such as the Archbishop himself decreed, after a fight during a Sunday afternoon game in the fall of 1959, that Holy Rosary and McCooey Catholic of Hannibal would no longer play. Or veteran official Bill Leaser barely escaped with his life from a charging Coach Ozzie Osborn after swallowing his whistle as Charles Kendrick was mugged on a layup as the buzzer sounded to end a one-point 1958 Regional Championship overtime loss to Madison, who would finish second in the Class S state tournament. Or Fr. Connolly was personal friends with Notre Dame football coach Knute Rockne. In 1925 the Trojans’ sent their star player, Lowell “Red” Hagan to South Bend to play for the Rock. In 1927 in a hotel room the night before the Fighting Irish tangled with the Iowa Hawkeyes, Fr. Connolly showed Rockne a trick play he had designed called the Flipper. Rockne used the play the next day and it became a staple of his playbook. He also took credit for designing it. Today the trickery is known as the widely used “flea flicker.” Or so the story goes.

Mudd would graduate from Holy Rosary with the class of 1955. After earning his teaching degree at Northeast Missouri State College in nearby Kirksville, Mudd became, in 1959, a trailblazer of sorts. “I was the first lay teacher ever hired by the school,” Mudd recalls, using a term for a teacher not belonging to a religious order; neither a nun or a priest. “There was a man in town named Maurice Ritter, we didn't have a school board. But he was kind of the guy in the Parish that oversaw the school. Holy Rosary had never had a teacher contract before. All the teachers had always been nuns and they didn't need contracts. Mr. Ritter went over to Mr. (Galen) Lankford, the Superintendent of the Monroe City public schools, and got one of their contracts. They crossed out Monroe City at the top and put in Holy Rosary. Filled in the amount $3601 and I signed it. That was the summer of 1959.” Mudd lived next door to the school.

In 1962, Coach Mudd and HR would produce the best one season record in school history, finishing 29-4. The team was led by John Thomas, the school’s career total points record holder with a total of 1,936.

“We had some really good teams at Holy Rosary,” Mudd states, “but my best team, by a whisker, was 1962. That was John Thomas’ senior year. I hope this doesn't make anybody mad, but John was the best player Holy Rosary ever had. He was the school's all-time leading scorer.”

Father Connolly

Mudd recalls a fortuitus break in the summer of 1961 that helped stack even more talent at the small school. “The year before there had been a high school over at Indian Creek called St. Stephens. They closed and we had several of their boys move in. We were going to have a good team anyway, but they made us even better. And I remember there was a big commotion over whether they would be eligible or not. Eventually, the State Association said they were.”

A total of seven boys transferred from Indian Creek to Holy Rosary. Five played on the basketball team. For a school that finished the 1961 school year with only 17 boys enrolled, the St. Stephens additions were a windfall for HR.

The 1962 team was dominated by a strong senior class made even deeper by the Indian Creek additions. “I averaged 26 points a game my junior year,” stated John Thomas. “My senior year it was down to 21. We had a lot more help.”

For Holy Rosary coach Dan Mudd the buildup was pure torture, like something devised by the Marquis de Sade to fill time while his whips were at the cleaners. "That morning and afternoon were just really a long day," Mudd recalls. The countdown to that evening's 1962 Regional championship boys' basketball game was on.

Territorial proximity, the two schools were 15 miles apart. High stakes, the winner would be crowned Regional champs. Neither had ever won a Regional. Hard feelings, an on-court fight two years prior had forced the two to cease scheduling regular season games. Bragging rights, many supporters were related by marriage and/or worked together. They had to live with the outcome every day.

In the late winter of 1962 Holy Rosary High School of Monroe City, MO and McCooey Catholic High School of Hannibal, MO could check all the above "big game" boxes. 

1962 HR Trojans

But first, some background for perspective. 

Hoppy Van Marter is a proud 1959 grad of Holy Rosary High School. He is to this day a self-described basketball junkie. 

"So, name the best team Holy Rosary team ever put on the court," I asked Hoppy? I had been told Hoppy, who has lived in Columbia, MO since 1980, knows his basketball and he will not hesitate to tell you, his thoughts. He does not disappoint. “The 1962 team was the best, although you had to love the grit and the fight of the ‘58 team. They (1958) were just a bunch of tough farm boys who did not back down from anyone. They came so close, the loss to Madison was just heart breaking (a one-point Regional final overtime loss), but that is what makes high school basketball so great. And that game was played at Holy Rosary.”

Van Marter, continued, “What made the 62 team better was John Thomas. The 58 team did not have one player they could go to like John when they needed a big play. The only Regional we ever won was by the 62 team and that has to weigh in on any discussion of who was better. But they were both good in their own ways. If we had scored two more points against Madison, that would probably tip it to the 58 team. Two points. That is how even these two teams were.”

The 1962 team thrived under Coach Dan Mudd's low key demeanor. "Those guys (1962) were not as intense, not just as players but also just overall as guys, as the 58 team was," says Van Marter. "That bunch in 58 would have been a handful for a young coach like Dan," says Hoppy. "Coach Osborn was just right for those guys, what they needed," Van Marter says in describing Mudd's more violate, colorful but still highly successful predecessor, Coach Ozzie Osborn. According to Hoppy, Mudd and Osborn were polar coaching opposites. 

But for the 1962 team, Mudd's unassuming ways fit like a glove. Instead of intimidation, Mudd utilized a quiet and steady emphasis on what Holy Rosary stood for, the core beliefs of the church. Hard work. Fairness. Humility. Basketball must be fun or why play? And winning is fun. Mudd’s teams won because he prepared them to do so, not due to a momentary hysterical reaction. He never berated the officials and would not allow his players to do it, either. 

“Coach Mudd had standards and he enforced those, in a quiet way, his way, but you knew you had to live up to those standards,” says 1966 grad John A. Hayes, who starred for the final edition of the Holy Rosary Trojans. "I would not call him a disciplinarian, at all. Maybe sometimes we needed a little more of what the older guys will tell you Coach Osborn (Mudd's predecessor) had - a temper. But that was not his (Mudd) way. It would not have worked. Coach Mudd succeeded because of what he didn’t say as much as what he did say. He never overcoach us and he wasn’t much for speeches, so when he did talk, we knew it was important—and we listened."

The Trojans opened the 1961-62 season with a 68 to 44 win at Bethel. In a harbinger of good times to come, John Thomas led the team with 24 points, and Mike Maher followed with 15. In late November, Coach Mudd’s squad showed that they were a team to be reckoned with in the area as they knocked off a highly regard Philadelphia club, coached by Monroe City native J.L, Burditt, 58-43. Jim Buckman led the team with 21 points and John Thomas followed with 19.

In late November the Trojans cruised to a championship trophy in the Leonard tournament. They survived a stalling strategy in the first round against Clarence, 26-17. Leonard fell in the semifinals 59-30. Philadelphia came up on the short end in the championship tilt 74-56. In the championship game, Jim Buckman led a balanced Trojan attack with 20 points. John Thomas contributed 19, Bill Campbell 13, Tom Hagen 11, and Mike Maher 9. Holy Rosary held a commanding 40 to 27 halftime lead.

On November 30th Holy Rosary opened Salt River Conference play on the road with a big 69 to 67 victory over Paris. The Coyote's had entered the season as the conference favorite. Paris returned three starters from a team that had won 25 games and finished fourth in the state in 1961. Paris was led by a young Coach Donnie Williams, a man who would spend over three decades leading both Paris boys' and girls’ hardwood fortunes.  “We had a lot of good games with Coach Williams,” Mudd recalls. “He was just a fine person and a good example for the whole area. When we beat his team early in the 62 season, we knew we were going to have a good team.”

John Thomas recalls that the first Paris win as a shot in the arm confidence builder for a young team with a young coach. “They had a player named James McBride who could jump out of the gym,” Thomas remembers. “He was ahead of his time, you didn’t see kids around here, in those days, playing above the rim. But he could really jump. My hook shot was pretty good. People don’t use that shot anymore but it was a good shot to get off against a taller opponent or one who could jump (high). You used your body to keep the defender away and give yourself room to shoot. I scored early in the game with a hook over McBride and back running down the floor he told me, ‘Try it again, Thomas, and I am going to knocked it out of the gym.’ A couple of possessions later I was on the right side, and I started my move for a hook shot. McBride took the bait. When I faked the hook, he skyed so high, I swear, he never has come down, still up in those rafters somewhere.” Thomas recalls with a hearty laugh. 

With his opponent McBride hopelessly hoovering high above, Thomas took two short dribbles and laid the ball in the basket. McBride went on to a stellar career at Moberly Junior College playing for future NBA coach Cotton Fitzsimmons. 

The Paris win moved the team's overall record to 7-0. Tom Buckman led the Trojans with 21 points.

The team first tasted defeat the second week in December with a disappointing semifinal loss to Hannibal McCooey Catholic in the Monroe City tournament. Two months later the Trojan's would in a big way balance the ledger with McCooey. 

Holy Rosary bounced back to claim the third-place trophy while McCooey for the only time in history claimed top honors in the state's oldest tournament.

1962 McCooey Shamrocks

The last game before the Christmas break saw the purple and gold travel to Ewing to notch a road win by a score of 69 to 48. Buckman and Thomas were the team’s leading scorers with 25 and 18 points respectfully. The boys finished the 1961 calendar year with a record of 10-1.

After the holiday break, Holy Rosary would claim another tournament championship, the first-place trophy for the Community Tournament. In the championship game Holy Rosary knocked off Frankford 68 to 67. Both Jim Buckman and John Thomas, according to the Monroe City News, were named to the "All-Star" Boys team. Thomas led the tournament in scoring with 61 points.

At the end of January, in a critical Salt River Conference rematch, this time at home, the Trojan’s again knocked off Paris, for a Homecoming 68-58 win. John Thomas ripped the nets for 26 points to raise the team’s overall mark to 17-1. Mary Ann Hays was named Homecoming Queen. It would be Paris' only two conference losses of the season. HR would finish the season with a conference mark of 10-0.

The Trojans suffered their second setback of the season in the middle of February when they fell to Frankford in a shootout 97-87. In late February Holy Rosary again came up short against Frankford, this time by the score of 73-67. They would not lose again until the state quarterfinals.

"They (Frankford) just seemed to have our number, for some reason," remembers Mudd. "Both games we lost were close, but the bounces just went their way, I guess." 

The Trojan’s entered the Class S regional tournament as the number one seed, ahead of Frankford, despite losing two of three games to Frankford. The tournament was held at Atlanta. Holy Rosary blew out Leonard in the opening round and knocked off the fourth seeded host Atlanta in the semifinals, to set up a championship bout with the Trojans’ longtime nemesis, Hannibal-McCooey.

To this day, Thomas remembers the significance of the Regional Tournament seedings. “We were seated first, and Frankford was seated second which meant they had to play a very good McCooey team in the semifinals. There were three teams in the Regional pretty even and by being seeded first, we only had to play one of them. That was important. We had beaten Frankford in the finals of the Community tournament, but they had beaten us twice in regular season scheduled games. But McCooey, who was seated 3rd, knocked off Frankford (in the semifinals). We really wanted to play McCooey in the finals. A couple of years before, there had been the fight and it was decided by the adults that it would be best if we just didn't play each other anymore. The rivalry had become that intense.” 

But now, there was no avoiding a showdown with a Regional title to the victor.

"McCooey had two boys who were brothers, and their name was Hanson," Coach Mudd says. "They were good players, and they were from Frankford but went to school at McCooey. Their dad was a well-known doctor in Frankford. I remember they really played well that night. I bet they were really motivated to be playing against their hometown team and maybe that is why they played so well, but whatever the reason, I am glad they did because we really wanted to play McCooey and not Frankford."

“It seems over the years,” Coach Mudd today reminisces, “McCooey was always in our way. We played them in some big games over the years. Just being McCooey alone made it a big game, but it sems they were always an opponent in a big game - the Monroe City Tournament, the McCooey Christmas Tournament, the Regional Tournament - and it seems like most of the time we would come up short.” But not on what Mudd remembers as a warm winter night in 1962.

Holy Rosary fell behind early but roared back with a big second quarter, outscoring McCooey 20-12 to take a 36-28 half time lead. “I remember how loud the gym was that night and how nervous I was the whole game. Even after it was over, I just could not settle down,” recalls Coach Mudd.

His squad maintained their lead in the 3rd quarter, starting the 4th stanza on top 58-51. “It was just back and forth all night," remembers Mudd. “Each point was a battle, that night, we would have died for each basket. They stayed close but I don't think they ever took the lead from us in the fourth quarter. We got some big steals and some easy layups off of them late in the game and that helped us pull away. It was a lot closer game than the final score makes it appear."

Time froze, says Thomas. "When we had the lead in the last minute, I swear, it seemed like time stood still, the seconds just would not tick off the scoreboard."

Led by Thomas’ 29 points and 23 from his steady running mate, Buckman, the Trojan’s finally hoisted a Regional Championship trophy after a hard fought 71-61 win. Mudd would call it “right up there as the biggest and most satisfying,” win in his seven years of leading Holy Rosary hoops fortunes.

The Trojans would lose in the state round of 16 to the small northwest MO town of Eagleville, whose star player was Jerry Armstrong.  It would conclude the best season in the history of the school, a 29-4 masterpiece topped off with an undefeated conference title.

Armstrong would go on to fame as the only white player to play regularly for Texas Western University, the team who pulled off the 1966 NCAA final four epic upset of the crumbling pillar of Jim Crow segregated college athletics: the all-white Kentucky Wildcats and their Coach Adolph Rupp. Ironically, Armstrong, the team’s sixth man, played in every game that year except the final when Coach Bear Haskins made no subs during the game, playing his five black starters all 40 minutes. The story of that trailblazing team would be made into the bestselling movie, “Glory Road,” and Armstrong’s character had a front and center role. Both 1962 Holy Rosary All-Stater John Thomas and Armstrong spent many years as Missouri public-school administrators.

“After we won the Regional,” Mudd says, “We had to win two games at Pershing Arena on the campus at Kirksville of Northeast Missouri State. That would have gotten us to the state tournament. The first game we beat a team name, Elmer. Most people have never heard of that little town, and they haven't had a school for years. Two days later we had to play Eagleville.”

According to the Monroe City News on the way to Kirksville for the game with Elmer the Trojans had an escort of 18 vehicles filled with loyal local fans. When the team arrived at Pershing Arena, Coach Mudd sat his troops down and read to them over 50 telegrams he had received from the area wishing the team well. "That was the type of community support we had," says Mudd. 

The game with Elmer was close. Holy Rosary led 24-23 at the half and the game was tied 35-35 after three quarters. The Trojans pulled away in the 4th quarter for a 50-43 triumph. Thomas and Buckman each tallied 16 points.

Jerry Armstrong

Even today his former players recall Mudd as a coach with a dedicated work ethic. Details were everything to him. But, in 1962, Mudd says, he over did it. “If I had one thing to do over at Holy Rosary it would be this: “I got a bus the day between the two games at Kirksville and loaded the team on it and drove back to Kirksville to practice on their floor. I had cleared a time with the coach there at the college. They had glass backboards, which was kind of unusual in that day and I wanted our kids to get a little more experience shooting on them. When we got to Kirksville, somebody had complained to the State Activities Association, that practicing there gave us an unfair advantage, and the people running the gym in Kirksville said we couldn't practice. I called over to Quincy College and talked to their coach. They had glass backboards and he said, ‘sure, bring them on over here.’ So, I put the kids back on the bus and drove all the way to Quincy from Kirksville to practice and then drove back to Monroe City. This was all on a very cold and snowy day and our old bus had no heat except for a small blower by the driver. You could see your breath while riding on it most winter nights. It was not an easy trip. To this day, I regret doing that. I really think I wore our boys out.”

The quarterfinal with Eagleville (North Harrison) was never close. The Shamrocks led after one period 24-7. Jerry Armstrong scored 20 of his game high 35 points in the first half, staking his team to a commanding 40-18 intermission lead. The final score was 71-49. Buckman led HR with 16 points. Thomas added 13 and Bill Campbell chipped in with 11. Bradleyville would defeat Eagleville the following week in the state finals, 59-49.

Four years later Mudd no longer had a team to coach as in the winter of 1966 it was announced on a Thursday afternoon that at the end of the current term, the school would be closing. “We really didn't see the closing coming,” said Mudd of the gut shot blow to the close-knit school and community. “The decision was made on the archdiocese level down in Jefferson City. And the people of Holy Rosary were never really given an opportunity to save the school or a choice in the matter. I remember when we made the announcement to the kids, there were just tears everywhere. Everyone was very upset. I remember one of the nuns said, ‘We will live in a tent if we need to, we'll do whatever we need to do to keep this school open.’ That's the kind of spirit that Holy Rosary High School had.”

Mudd's seven year coaching record at Holy Rosary was 123-67. In Mudd's first season, 1960, Tommy Buckman set the school single game scoring mark with a 50-point explosion.  Mudd's only losing season as the school's final head coach was the 1963 rebuilding team that finished with a mark of 10-17. The freshman from that season comprised the leaders on the Trojan's final team, 1966 and they that year won 22 games. The first game of Mudd's HR coaching career came in October 1959, when the Trojans routed Augusta 65-33. The record book closed on Dan Mudd and the Holy Rosary Trojans when they lost the Regional third place game in February 1966 to Providence of St. Louis (an all-black catholic school) by a score of 78-66.

In the summer of 1966 Mudd was hired by the Monroe City Public Schools and spent the next 31 years coaching junior high sports and serving as the school’s junior high athletic director.

Mudd recently celebrated his 85th birthday. His current life, he admits, has been challenging. “There are times when life can be hard and right now for me it is. Both of my sons have passed away,” he shares while not trying to hide the sadness in his voice. 

Fatherhood is forever and forever, by the Grace of God, can be the blink of an eye. People say losing a child is the worst. It's like forced membership to a club you don't want to belong to--and you're in it for life. To hear the anguish in Coach's voice, after all these years, took my breath. But that is the way life is, for certain as we age. It can make one shiver.

"Our youngest, Greg, had some health problems but his death caught us unprepared," said Coach Mudd. His oldest son, Pat, passed away this past fall. His death was more prolonged but no less devastating for Mudd and his wife who are still blessed, he says, with two grandchildren and a great grandchild.

“And my wife Sue has some health issues, and I don’t like to leave her alone for long,” Mudd says. "We both retired in 1997. Sue started teaching in 1959 over in Illinois and did that for a few years. Even after we married, she drove over to Payson each day for two years. She taught Physical Education. Then when she got a chance to teach over here, she switched over to Art. Between us we have over 70 years of teaching the kids of Monroe City. She has been my bride for 61 years.”

“This town has always been our home and we have a lot of help here and we are fortunate we can still live at home,” states Mudd.

What he misses most Mudd says is watching the youth of the only hometown he has ever known play sports. “I probably have not been to a football or basketball game in the last five years. Until then, I never missed.”

Mudd literally lives for his pre-dawn morning exercise routine that is built around a thirty-minute bike ride. “I fear if I ever missed a day I wouldn’t start again. So, I ride every day, even if I must force myself, some days. But I know if I am still riding, I am still living.”

Here is a man who at age 11 knew he wanted to be a coach. “I had a great career at Monroe City” he today humbly states. “But the years at Holy Rosary were also special. I guess in some ways I had the best of both worlds. I was a Trojan and then I was a Panther. And as I get older, I treasure both. David, do you know how lucky that makes me? Kids in this town have been good for me. I hope I have been good for them.” 

Safe bet, Coach, safe bet.