Century of memories: Monroe City celebrates 100-year milestone for basketball invitational

MONROE CITY, Mo. — The semi-weekly Monroe City News reported in its Tuesday, Feb. 24, 1925, edition that a four-county basketball tournament would be played the following Friday and Saturday at Monroe City High School.

Featuring teams from Monroe, Marion, Ralls and Shelby counties, it was billed as “the largest and most interest event in athletics ever held here.”

The Monroe City Invitational Tournament is still going strong a century later.

“I’m sure when they started this the founders didn’t think we would still be doing this 100 years later,” said Ed Talton, Monroe City High School’s principal, a lifelong resident and a member of the school’s 1985-86 boys basketball team that finished third in the Class 2A state tournament.

“This has been a staple in the community for so long. It’s something the community rallies around. A lot of pride goes into it. It makes being from here something we can hang our hat on.”

The 100^th playing of the tournament will begin Monday night with a field of eight boys teams and eight girls teams. The championship games will be played Saturday night. The Palmyra boys and South Shelby girls are the top seeds.

The “oldest basketball tournament in the state” has been played annually since the 1924-25 season except for 1942 and 1943 because of World War II travel restrictions. But there were two tournaments played in both 1938 and 1944 — one in February and one in December each year — so this will be the 100^th playing.

The Monroe City Invitational has been viewed for decades as the unofficial tip-off to the high school basketball season in Northeast Missouri.

“Thanksgiving, the Monroe City tournament and Christmas. Those are the three things people talk about when winter rolls around,” said Brock Edris, the athletic director and boys basketball coach at Monroe City.

The tournament is rich in history.

Don Faurot, who went on to become a legendary University of Missouri football coach, officiated games. Norm Stewart, the all-time winningest coach in Mizzou basketball history, played and was involved in the most bizarre finish ever. Gene Bartow, the man who later replaced John Wooden at UCLA, coached in it.

And actor Henderson Forsythe, a Tony Award winner best known for his 30-year run as Dr. David Stewart on the television soap opera “As the World Turns,” played for Monroe City in the 1930s. Forsythe also depicted Col. Harland Sanders in TV commercials for Kentucky Fried Chicken.

One other bit of trivia: Paris won the first boys tournament and Holy Rosary, the Catholic high school in Monroe City, took the girls title.

‘There has always been a lot of community involvement’

What began as a small tournament field quickly ballooned to 30 or more teams combined in the boys and girls brackets. That required games to begin at 7 a.m. each day, with the last scheduled for 9 p.m. It wasn’t until 1961 that tournament officials limited participation to eight boys teams and eight girls teams.

That created some logistical issues.

For instance, washing machines were a luxury not often found in those early years. Most clothes were still being washed on a washboard or in a basin of water with a plunger-like device, so cleaning player uniforms between games was no easy task. Making sure players were fed was another.

Travel was another consideration. Highways 24 and 36, which now intersect in Monroe City, had not been built in 1925. While the tournament always had a local flavor, featuring many smaller Northeast Missouri schools that vanished through consolidation, it also drew teams from across the state.

Crystal City played in 1928 and Herculaneum in 1929, schools 150 miles from Monroe City. Elvins and Leadwood, located even farther away south of St. Louis, were regular participants. Tilden from north of Springfield in Southwest Missouri was another, to name a few.

Dave Almany spent 26 years as a high school basketball coach, including from 1984-89 at Monroe City. Currently the head cross country and track and field coach at St. Charles Community College, he has authored books (including a biography of legendary Vashon coach Floyd Irons), writes a blog on various topics and conducts summer basketball camps.

Almany returned to watch the Monroe City Invitational three years ago after a 32-year hiatus. “I started going back and kept going back,” he said.

He is a member of the 10-person committee staging the 100^th anniversary celebration this week and has done some research into the tournament, as have two Monroe City natives, Linda Whelan Geist and Joyce Gares Adams.

“Crystal City and Herculaneum rode trains up,” Almany said of those 1920s teams. “Families put them up. Players stayed with different families of Monroe City players. There has always been a lot of community involvement, and I think that has carried over. That’s part of why it has endured.”

The tournament was staged in February until it was moved to December for the 1937-38 season, with a second tourney played the following February. There also was a tourney in February 1944, but otherwise it has been a December staple since, except for the two war years.

The 1941 tournament was played even though it tipped off two days after Japan bombed Pearl Harbor and one day after President Franklin Roosevelt declared war on the Japanese Empire. Paris won the boys title that year, Tilden the girls crown.

Other issues arose. The 1946 tournament bracket in the school’s official records includes this handwritten note: “Shelbyville was forced to withdraw at this point because of Scarlet Fever.” At the time, scarlet fever was the ninth most common cause of death and anyone with the bacterial illness was forced to quarantine and place a sign in the window of their home.

The most controversial finish to a championship game came in 1950 when Center squared off against Shelbyville, led by then-junior Norm Stewart. The game was played on the stage, as many were in those days, in what later became the junior high gym, surrounded by walls and a drop-off on one side.

Almany picks up the story.

“Shelbyville was down four points when Stewart scored with 3 seconds left, stole the inbound pass and hit a layup,” he said. “The scorekeeper was looking down recording the first basket and didn’t see the second 2 points.

“There was a dispute about whether the game should go into overtime or Center won by 2 points. There was no video back then. It eventually went to the Monroe City School Board, and it declared both teams winners.”

‘Our community supports our schools’

For the record, Palmyra has won the most boys championships with 28, including 10 between 1971-84. It is followed by Monroe City (25), South Shelby (7) and Paris (6). Twenty-seven teams overall have claimed titles.

On the girls side, Monroe City has won the tournament 23 times, followed by Palmyra (21) and South Shelby (15), which won a record seven straight from 2003-09. Twenty-four teams overall have earned titles.

The Monroe City boys and girls teams have won the tournament in the same season five times — 1962 (the first time any school won both titles), 1967, 1981, 2016 and 2020.

Almany believes the emphasis placed on the girls portion of the tournament has been instrumental in its longevity and success.

“It has always been an equal partner,” he said. “Girls basketball in Northeast Missouri has always been so good. It was so far advanced when Title IX came along. The girls tournament has always been as big as the boys. I’ve always thought that was a big strength of this tournament.”

The tournament committee will honor many Monroe City teams and athletes this week, along with community members who have played instrumental roles over the years. Talton said a local company has donated 1,000 medals to be awarded.

Among them will be the Monroe City girls teams that won state championships in 1998 and 2000, finished second in 1987 and third in 1988 and 1999. So will boys teams that finished second in Class 2A in 1982, third in 1986 and 2020, and fourth in 1995.

There’s also the 1955-56 Monroe City boys team that won its first 35 games — still the school record for most wins in a season — before suffering its only loss in the Class M state quarterfinals. The 1956-57 team then went 30-5 for a two-year record of 65-6.

The contributions of Holy Rosary, which closed in 1966 after a 65-year run, will be highlighted Monday night. Washington School, the long-shuttered all-Black school, will be recognized Tuesday night.

Missouri desegregated schools after the 1954 Brown vs. Board of Education ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court. Donald L. Scott, who grew up in Hunnewell and attended Washington School, became the first Black player to suit up for Monroe City in 1955.

Scott went on to have a distinguished career in the U.S. Army, first serving under Gen. Norman Schwarzkopf in Vietnam and retiring in 1991 as a brigadier general.

He later served as the chief operating officer and chief of staff for Atlanta Mayor Maynard Jackson before becoming the founding director and CEO of the AmeriCorps National Civilian Community Corps under President Bill Clinton. He accepted the role of deputy librarian for Congress in 1996, retiring 10 years later.

Sylvia Robinson Bracks and the late Mary Holland Steward became the first Black girls to play for Monroe City in 1963. Bracks’ father, J.K. “Buck” Robinson, had played for the Kansas City Monarchs with Jackie Robinson and Buck O’Neil in the Negro League.

“People are going to learn a lot about the tournament, about the people who have been involved in the tournament,” Talton said. “Our community supports our schools. We know athletics are a part of the educational experience.”

And when Saturday night comes, the gymnasium that seats around 800 people will be packed and loud awaiting new champions to be crowned. It’s been that way for a century now.

“We started meeting a year ago,” Almany said of the anniversary committee, “and (Superintendent) Tony (DeGrave) recognized right away we had one chance to do it right. We wanted to include everybody.

“From a social point of view, Monroe City is a microcosm of post-World War II America. Athletics was a very big part of pulling Monroe City together, and what better representation of that than this tournament.”