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.”
