Roger Daniels: A Cut Above

For years, you couldn’t walk into Edna L. Seyb Auditorium in Kahoka, Missouri without looking up.

Above the double doors, framed in wood and softened by time, hung a photo of a young man kneeling at center court — one knee resting on the painted Indian that filled the circle.

The jersey: Indians.

The number: 40.

That picture of Roger Daniels wasn’t just decoration. It was direction for many.

For nearly a decade, from 1989 through the mid-1990s, it was the only boys’ basketball photo on the wall. A silent north star for every future Indian who walked beneath it. Every kid who laced up for practice looked up and wondered what it felt like to be there.

What most never knew was that Roger once felt what it was like not to.

That young man in the frame had been cut from the seventh-grade team.

“I really didn’t know how to play,” Roger remembers. “Going from 5th and 6th grade PTO basketball to real school basketball was a big adjustment. I wasn’t ready. After four days of practice, coach said if he called your name, you got a uniform. Mine wasn’t called. No explanation. Just, ‘Thank you, maybe next year.’”

To Roger, that cut went deeper than missing out on games. It meant missing out on being part of something he’d looked up to for years.

“To wear the Clark County jersey back then was an honor,” he said. “It was something everyone in the school noticed. The kids who wore it carried themselves different. You wanted to be one of them.” 

He paused. “At that moment, I felt horrible. Like I wasn’t good enough. All my friends made it, and I didn’t. I was trying as hard as I could. It was the first time I was told you’re not going to get to play.”

A lot of kids quit after that. Roger didn’t.

“When I got home, I told my parents. My dad said, ‘The only way you’re going to make that team is to practice more. Nobody gives you anything in life, especially something you really want. So, if that’s what you want, get out there and practice.’”

So, he did.

He asked for a new basketball and a hoop for Christmas. When his dad couldn’t get it up fast enough, Roger walked to Black Hawk Elementary, where two bent old rims hung on the back of the building, and shot until his hands hurt.

He wasn’t chasing glory. He was chasing the sound of the ball through the net. The echo that told him he was getting closer.

By eighth grade, he made the team. Coach John McKinzie and Coach Jon Kirchner both noticed a change, not just in his ability, but in his attitude.

Sophomore year, he began to feel like he could hang with the varsity guys — players like Joe Lapsley, Corey Denham, Kurt Winters, Chad Hunziker, and John Bevans. “Those guys were tough,” Roger said. “But when I could hold my own against them, I thought maybe I belonged.”

He remembers long nights in the gym. Staying late with teammate Bill Bryant, playing one-on-one after practice. Getting doubled in scrimmages just so he’d learn to fight through it.

“They used to put two guys on me to play defense,” Roger said with a laugh. “They got abused a lot in practice. But without that, I wouldn’t have gotten better.”

He finished the year with 48 points and maybe 20 rebounds, mostly in short, late-game minutes, but what he gained couldn’t be measured on a stat sheet.

He learned. He listened. And he had coaches who never let him stay comfortable.

“Coach Kirchner taught me how to post up right — wide stance, arms out, hands ready. Always be in a basketball stance, always ready to move,” Roger said. “He was excellent at teaching the little things — the things that make you a player instead of just someone on the court.”

That work began to show.

By his junior year, he was averaging double figures, and you could feel the game beginning to open up for him. The postseason lights started to find him, too.

During Roger’s junior season in 1987-88, Clark County rolled into March with a 25–3 record and handled South Shelby in Sectionals at Northeast Missouri State (now Truman State University), Roger scoring 18 points behind senior Bill Elwell’s 19. That win brought Wellston, the same Wellston that had just hung 96 on Monroe City. Roger poured in 23 and went toe-to-toe with their big man, Clarence Cain, but Wellston held on and eventually won the state title. 

Ask Roger when he knew he could really play, and he’ll take you back to that Wellston game. “They had a 6’7” guy named Clarence Cain,” Roger said. “An All-State caliber player. In the first half, I scored 10 points. They called timeout, and I told Coach McKinzie, ‘Just get me the ball. I can score on him.’ That’s when I knew I could play with anybody.”

When the season ended, Roger’s name appeared on the Class 2A Second-Team All-State list, the first real sign that people outside Clark County were starting to notice.

A year later, everything came together. Clark County entered the 1988-89 sectional play 20–7 and took down Monroe City behind Roger’s 25 points, setting up a showdown with undefeated California, 29–0, inside a packed Pershing Arena. More than 3,000 fans watched the Indians jump out to a 31–22 halftime lead and hold their ground, even as California’s 6’8” All-State center Kevin Wells erupted for 38. Roger answered with 24 points of his own, and Clark County stunned the state 60–55 to earn its first-ever trip to the Final Four.

For the kid who once walked home without a jersey, the next step felt almost unreal.

“Stepping onto that floor, it felt massive,” Roger said. “We were used to maybe 750 fans at home or 3,000 fans at Pershing Arena in Kirksville against California. Springfield felt like the world. Coach told us, ‘Everything measures the same. Don’t let it intimidate you.’ But man, it didn’t feel the same.”

In all that noise, they started to feel like they belonged there.

At the Hammons Student Center on the campus of Southwest Missouri State University (now Missouri State University) in Springfield over 7,000 fans would take in the final day of the tournament. With that many eyes on them, how they answered next mattered.

After losing to Bernie 74-51 in the semifinals, the Indians would take down St. Pius X 67-57 in the third-place game. Roger would again lead the scoring for the Indians with 26 points.

But it wasn’t just about him. 

 “The heartbeat of that team was the bench,” Roger said. “A lot of those guys didn’t play much, but when they were called on, they were ready. They made us better every single day.”

They rode that heart all the way to Springfield, Clark County’s first trip to the Show-Me Showdown, where they brought home a 3rd place trophy — still the only boys’ basketball state trophy the school has ever claimed.

When the season finally closed, the kid whose name once showed up on a cut list saw his name reappear, this time on the Missouri Sportswriters and Sportscasters’ First-Team All-State roster, the first Clark County boy’s basketball player ever to earn the honor.

Five years after “maybe next year,” Roger Daniels was one of Missouri’s best. At Clark County, that honor came with a framed photo hung proudly outside the gym doors.

“At the time, it was amazing,” Roger said. “But it hit harder later when my kids could walk into the gym, look up, and see their dad as a young man.”

He doesn’t dwell on that run much anymore, but when he does, it’s never about himself. It’s about the teammates beside him, the fans who filled the stands, and the memories that have stayed alive long after the final buzzer. “That part of my life has helped me through a lot of dark times,” Roger said. “People still stop me and talk about Springfield. They remember every play.”

He still hopes Clark County finds its way back there someday. “I love Clark County basketball,” he said. “We deserve to be back at State.”

That pride, that connection, never left him.

And in a way, it still lives in that basketball photo, the one that hung alone above the double doors, now part of the building’s story.

Kids walked under it on their way to class, to lunch, to practice. They saw a player who’d made it, not realizing he’d once been told he wasn’t good enough.

After the 1995-96 school year, all the trophies and photos were relocated to the new school on the east edge of town.

And Roger’s photo — once a lone reminder above those double doors — found a new home there too.

No longer by itself but surrounded now by decades of basketball players who followed his path. The single photo became part of a wall of legacy.

When Roger looks at it now, he doesn’t see himself. He sees a promise. 

One he’s honored ever since the night his dad told him, “Nobody gives you anything in life. If you want it, go get it.”

Roger knows his story was once told often — a lesson for every kid who didn’t make the team. Maybe it isn’t shared as much now, but that’s alright. These days, what matters most to him is his family.

“I just try to make my kids proud every day,” he said. “They still can’t believe I was able to play, but I’ve got video proof, and that big picture hanging in the school commons doesn’t lie.”

His photo now watches over a new generation. A symbol not just of what one player achieved, but of what any player can become.

Roger’s basketball story hasn’t ended — one that began the day he was cut, and continues every time another kid walks out of the gym wondering if he’s good enough.

And Roger knows they are .

Because he was.

And he proved it.

And now, surrounded by the many who came after, his picture still whispers the same quiet truth to every player who looks its way—

 “Nobody gives you anything in life. If you want it, go get it.”

A Shot Across a Million Screens

On Sunday nights in the ’80s and ‘90s, after the late local news signed off on NBC affiliates across the country, something magical happened. A charismatic George Michael would lean into the camera, flash that signature grin, and press a giant yellow button. Lights blinked, reels whirred, and The Sports Machine came to life.

For millions of fans without cable, The George Michael Sports Machine was more than a Sunday night tradition, it was a portal to the wider world of sports. Not just the professionals under bright stadium lights, but also the moments that might have otherwise been lost.

That was the beauty of The Sports Machine. It didn’t chase the mainstream. It found the remarkable in the ordinary — the people who made others shine, and the rare moments when they shined themselves.

A kid leaping at the fence, arm extended, robbing a home run.

A cowboy clinging to a raging bull at a dusty rodeo.

A player flinging an over-the-shoulder prayer in a small gym in northeast Missouri.

That’s what happened to Monroe City senior standout Drew Quinn in January 1993. On the road at neighboring Palmyra, Drew launched a buzzer-beater over his shoulder from nearly mid-court — the kind of play you couldn’t script if you tried. Somehow, the ball found the bottom of the net. And somehow, that clip found its way into the hands of The Sports Machine producers.

One Sunday night, there it was — a kid from a town of 2,750 lighting up 2.2 million TV screens across America.

Drew Quinn (top right).  Photo courtesy of Todd Yager

This was before viral videos. Before social media. Before highlights could be uploaded in real time or replayed a million times before morning. Back then, if you made The Sports Machine Plays of the Week, it meant something. It meant someone believed your moment was worth sharing.

Drew’s shot wasn’t just a great play. It was the kind of moment The Sports Machine was made for. A small-town spark that caught the nation’s eye. Proof that sometimes, even the quietest gyms can make the loudest noise.

The nation saw the shot. But those who knew Drew best—the ones who shared the court with him—knew he was so much more than that one moment. 

“We got closer following our senior season during the McDonald's/Herald-Whig Classic,” said Travis Ellison, who faced Drew a few times as a rival from Clark County.

“We stayed overnight in the dorms at Quincy University for the all-star game,” Travis said. “We got to talking, and the first thing he said to me was, ‘I can’t believe you didn’t make First Team All-State.’”

Drew himself had earned the honor, but he was thinking about how deserving others were too.

Travis laughed at the memory. “I told him, ‘Man, you dropped 44 points on us in the district title game.’ But Drew just shook his head and said, ‘Yeah, but I had zero recruits. You got recruited.’”

That moment sparked a friendship built on mutual respect.

“When I decided to go to Kirkwood Community College in Cedar Rapids (IA),” Travis said, “I told him, ‘If I talk to Coach Oglesby, maybe you can walk on.’ Drew said, ‘That’d be great.’”

Drew wanted his own moment to shine, not in anyone’s shadow, but through the work he’d put in.

Soon, Drew was there. “We got an apartment together and roomed together for a semester,” Travis said. “He worked on his game nonstop. Coach Oglesby once said he’d need a quicker release in college to handle taller, longer defenders. Drew took it as a challenge. That’s the kind of person he was.”

He pauses, then his voice softens. “He was in the gym every night working on it. Hours down at the gym, just trying to get better, trying to make Hey, you doing OK? Are you studying? the roster. He was a perfectionist. He was a fighter. Whatever he did, he did it 100%. All out. All in.”

Late at night, after long practices, the two would wind down by playing Tecmo Bowl. One night, the topic of The Sports Machine came up.

“I asked him, ‘Remember the George Michael thing?’” Travis said. “He laughed and said, ‘I was wondering when you’d bring that up.’ Then he said, ‘It was pure luck. I just threw it up over my shoulder.’”

Travis shakes his head. “If you go back and watch it, it was wild. Almost like a hook shot from midcourt. He kind of turned, chucked it one-handed, and the buzzer went off. The ball dropped through.”

Most would call it luck. But anyone who’d seen him work knew it wasn’t.

Because luck doesn’t stay after practice. 

Luck doesn’t chase perfection when no one’s watching. 

Luck doesn’t keep the lights on long after everyone’s gone home.

And luck sure doesn’t earn you a spot at Hannibal-LaGrange College, where Drew shined from 1996 to 1998, finishing his career on the national stage at the NAIA Division I national tournament.

Years later, the glow that once found him in a small-town gym would fade from the screen that shared it.

The Sports Machine aired its final episode on March 25, 2007. After thanking his co-host and crew, it’s been told that George Michael smiled and said, “Last one out, turn out the lights.”

Years earlier, in a quiet Monroe City gym, I like to imagine those same words echoing differently.

Practice over. Bleachers empty. One kid still out there, shooting. Dreaming of something bigger.

And maybe, from the doorway, a coach called, “Last one out, turn out the lights.”

But Drew Quinn didn’t answer. He just kept shooting. The sound of the ball echoing back like his reply.

Because for Drew, turning out the lights was never the end of the night.

It was the proof he’d stayed long enough to shine.

Carrying the Game Through Time

“Which three books would you take to help rebuild civilization?”

That’s the haunting question left behind in the 1960 film The Time Machine, after the inventor, H. George Wells mysteriously vanishes into the future. His loyal friend, David Filby, returns to the lab to find the time machine gone, along with three missing books from the inventor’s library.

The camera lingers. The question lands.

“Which three would you have taken?”

It’s a brilliant question, because it’s not really about books. What do we carry forward when the world resets? It’s about what truly matters. Culture, values, and legacy. The essentials worth persevering, when all else is gone.

So let’s put a twist on this concept. Let’s say the time machine was real. But instead of saving civilization, your mission was to save something smaller…

You are to rebuild basketball culture.

No stats. No records. No history of what the sport is (or was). Just a blank slate. Basketball culture itself would be starting from a fresh hardwood floor or patch of dirt somewhere in the far distant future.

Instead of taking three books, the time traveler takes three NBA Entertainment VHS tapes. The NBA Entertainment vault holds more than fifty-five videos over a twenty year period, but only three can survive to teach the next generation what this game once was, and what it could be again.

What do you bring to teach the future how to build the game again?

For a generation raised on rewind buttons and magnetic tape, the NBA Entertainment collection was our history book. Each tape didn’t just show the game, it taught it. These weren’t just highlight reels. They were stories frozen in time. And if you’re picking just three to carry the spirit of basketball forward, the choice matters. Pick wisely.

Here’s what I’d bring.

NBA Jam Session (1993)

If you’re going to teach the future what basketball felt like, you start here. NBA Jam Session was pure hip-hop from Naughty by Nature, Kris Kross, and Bell Biv DeVoe rattling under the highlights. It was Shawn Kemp cocking back a tomahawk, Larry Johnson spinning into a rim-shaking two-hander, Dominique Wilkins unfurling a windmill. It was Magic whipping a no-look pass, Isiah threading the needle, Stockton lobbing it up for Malone and Shaq bringing down the entire stanchion. This was the NBA as a mixtape, a language of style and sound. Those names may not echo in a new civilization, but if the game ever had to begin again, NBA Jam Session would. Because it wasn’t just about the game being played, it was about the rhythm, the creativity and the feeling it gave us.

Come Fly With Me (1988)

Michael Jordan wasn’t just a player, he took the game to new heights that inspired a future generation of players. Come Fly With Me documented the rise of a cultural icon who redefined gravity. Future civilizations will need this tape to understand what it means to dream big and hang in the air just a little longer than anyone else. Because if you’re trying to rebuild basketball from the ground up, you’ll need something or someone to inspire to.

Dazzling Dunks and Basketball Bloopers (1988)

Because no culture is complete without joy.

Hosted by Marv Albert and Frank Layden, this wasn’t just a blooper reel, it was a reminder. That for every dunk, there’s a missed layup. That for every game-winner, there’s a slip on the floor. The game isn’t just glory, it’s grace in the face of failure. 

You can almost see it. 

Those three tapes spinning again in some distant future, each one shaping the game’s rebirth in its own way.

One teaching how to rise. One showing how to move with soul. And one reminding us how to laugh, how to miss, and how to try again.

The time traveler didn’t go back to fix the past. He went forward.  Not just to teach the game but to make sure they remembered how it felt.

Because those three tapes weren’t just about basketball. They were about what it means to be human.

And in watching them, they wouldn’t just relearn how to play. They’d remember why it was ever worth playing at all.

So now the question is yours:

Which three tapes would you take?

The Walk Down Lucky Street

Ups and downs are expected in life, especially in sports. The hills will give you a workout, just try not to get too sore.

That’s what they don’t tell you when you fall in love with a game, that it will break your heart sometimes. That it will test you in the quietest ways. And that it might, if you’re lucky, teach you something even greater than how to win.

For us, it started on Lucky Street. A road that winds through Fayette, Missouri. But for my brother Jaryt and me, it became something more. It was the first place we learned what it really meant to lose.

We were just kids then, fresh out of junior high, undefeated and full of belief. Coach Kevin Garner took us to our first team camp, Jeff Sherman’s Runnin’ Eagle Basketball Camp, at Central Methodist College (now Central Methodist University). We walked in with pride. We walked out with perspective.

The camp director had placed our freshman team in an older Junior Varsity division, against players bigger, stronger, and seasoned. In our first game against New Bloomfield, we scraped out a win. In the second, we crumbled against Eugene. We turned the ball over again and again. Each mistake meant push-ups. Coach was relentless, but not cruel. He was teaching us something, and we knew it.

We didn’t just get beat, we beat ourselves. The scoreboard wasn’t the problem. Our effort was.

Afterwards, we walked a mile from the recreation center on campus to Fayette High School for our next game. Silent. Humbled. Down Lucky Street. It felt like anything but.

Our walk down Lucky Street

Outside the gym, Coach pulled us together in the cafeteria. His voice rose at times. And then it would drop. And that somehow hit harder. There was disappointment in those words.

“You didn’t just get beat. You beat yourselves. That team didn’t out-talent you. They didn’t out-scheme you. But they did outwork you. And effort? That’s 100% in your control. And when things got tough, some of you shut down instead of stepping up.”

He looked around from player-to-player. Locking eyes with each of us.

“You can have all the potential in the world, but if your effort is inconsistent and your mindset isn’t right, we’re just going to keep beating ourselves, and that’s the worst kind of loss. Because I’ve seen what you’re capable of. I’ve seen you execute. I’ve seen you compete. But this morning, we didn’t play to our standard. We played down. We played soft. And that’s not who we are.”

He paused. Let it hurt.

Then he challenged us.

One game left today. Christian Brothers College (CBC) Junior Varsity. A team with a name that carried weight across the state. He looked at us and said, “You need to walk into that gym and play your best basketball. Not because of who they are, but because of who you are. And who you’re becoming.”

We were ready. Or we thought we were.

Then, early in the game, Matt Johnson stepped up and took a charge in transition. It was textbook. But the referee saw it differently. A whistle. A foul. And then a second one. This time on Coach Garner, who had erupted in defense of Matt. Too many words, too much passion. He was tossed from the game. But it didn’t stop there.

“Coach,” a staff member said. “Not only are you gone. You can take your team with you.”

Our heads sank.

But then Coach did something none of us expected.

He didn’t storm off. He didn’t argue his way out the door. He gathered us back in the same cafeteria, sat us down, and looked each of us in the eyes once again.

“If I ever feel like you’re in the right, I’ll stand by you. Every time.”

We looked back at him, and we knew. He meant it.

He believed Matt had sacrificed for the team by taking that charge. And even if the ref got it wrong, Coach wanted us to know his reaction wasn’t about the whistle. It was about us. About standing up for your guys when it counts.

He’d go to battle for us, not just when it’s easy, but especially when it’s not.

Because that’s what loyalty looks like.

It wasn’t about the charge. It was about trust. About belief. About having your back when no one else does.

It was about always being there for us. 

We don’t remember the final scores of that camp. We remember that. Those words.

The game isn’t just about wins and losses. It’s about learning. And growth. It’s about cold days that eventually warm. About the valleys you pass through and the roads that teach you where your light lives.

Two years later, Coach Garner would leave Clark County. Within a few years, he’d take Sullivan to the state tournament. I watched proudly from the Hearnes Center stands, remembering that group of boys walking down Lucky Street. Talented but untested, still learning what it meant to rise to a standard instead of settling for comfort. And I knew the team he now led had been taught those same lessons about effort, accountability, loyalty and being there for each other when it mattered.

Years later, Jaryt would get into coaching as well. And Coach Garner? He eventually stepped away from the sidelines entirely. But he didn’t leave the game. He became an Assistant Executive Director at the Missouri State High School Activities Association (MSHSAA), overseeing basketball across the state, with responsibilities like interpreting rules, working with student transfers, school compliance, supporting teams, and having the honor of handing out medals at the Basketball State Tournament.

In 2021, Garner announced his retirement after a stellar career in education and administration. 

That same year, Jaryt’s Boonville Lady Pirates made a historic run, earning the school’s first-ever girls basketball state championship.

But something about that moment didn’t sit quite right.

Tradition holds that a school’s representative on the MSHSAA Board of Directors presents the trophy and medals for their region. That’s how it’s typically done.

But loyalty doesn’t always follow tradition.

Because it was never just about a missed charge call. It was about trust. About belief. About having your back. About showing up, even when it’s not required.

And then… there he was. Coach Garner.

He made the trip to Springfield, Missouri. Not out of obligation, but out of loyalty. Not for a ceremony, but to keep a promise. Garner wasn’t scheduled to take part in the weekend’s award recognitions.  But the Class 4 trophy presentation, the one Boonville would be part of, was different. That one, Garner made sure he didn’t miss. That one, he needed to be there for.

Presiding over the official presentation, with medals in hand and pride in his eyes, Garner placed the medallion around Jaryt’s neck.

Garner placing championship medal around Jaryt's neck

Because decades earlier, in a quiet cafeteria outside a high school gym, he looked a group of wide-eyed boys in the eyes and said, “I’ll always be there for you.”

Some streets are just roads. But Lucky Street? That was the beginning of everything.

A lesson in humility. A vow of loyalty. A reminder that the game will bring both ups and downs, and the best coaches, the ones who leave a mark, will also show up for you.

Especially when it matters most.

That’s the kind of road worth walking.