M You know most stories have a need a protagonist and an antagonist to tell her the story. Well, um and telling this story the protagonists. The good is the community, it's the team, it's the boys. The antagonist is a world that pushes against us. On this episode of the Beargrease podcast, will be crossing the streams of sports, rural life, and hunting as we learned about the Bradleyville Eagles basketball dynasty in Missouri, lasting from nineteen sixty two to nineteen sixty eight, which includes a still standing state record, sixty four game winning streak, and three state championships. We'll talk with author Leon Combs, who wrote a book about the dynasty, and we'll meet one of the players, Mr. Leon Boyd, the team's ball handling point guard and coon hunter extraordinaire who still hunts and loves basketball to this day. In today's world, extreme specialization is often seen as the key to success in sports in life, but is that true? I want to explore the idea of how having diversity can make us better at everything we do, like being a coon hunting basketball player. But it's a toss up. The drama of this sports story will have you on the edge of your bleacher as we hear the actual broadcast of the Bradleyville Eagles nineteen sixty eight State championship game. And we're gonna go on a coon hunt with Leon Boyd. I doubt you're gonna want to miss this one. Boys, it's all fun. The only other thing I've done this about was coon hunt, So if you know, that's that the whole plan of fun to me, alright, I enjoyed it. My name is Clay Nukelem. This is the Bear Grease Podcast, where we'll explore things forgotten but relevant, search for insight and unlikely places, and where we'll tell the story of Americans who lived their lives close to the land. Presented by f HF Gear, American made, purpose built hunting and fishing gear that's designed to be as rugged as the places we explore. Great passed by Ali Shepherd Newcomb with the With the Two, I want to let you in on a little known secret. The Newcombs are ballers. We love some basketball. But let me qualify this. I wish I could say that I had been a great basketball player, but I can't. Though I had the potential to be a dec a small town point guard, and I did play through my high school years. I was not a star. I had one night of glory when I knocked down five three pointers against Clark's full and won the Player of the Game award. But I pretty much squandered my high school years away in an identity struggle of whether I was an athlete or a coon hunter. I'm being quite serious, it's the truth. In my youth, the two worlds couldn't coexist. I couldn't resolve their conflicts. My dad always wanted me to be well rounded, and he'd say, you need to be able to play a round a golf and kill a deer with a bow. Much to his chagrin, I wasn't very well rounded, and let's just say I didn't play much golf. The older I've gotten, however, the more I've realized his general idea was correct if his intent was to make me more successful in life, but would it have a common narrator of in America is that early starting, extreme specialization in sports and life is key to success. Stories like Tiger Woods, whose father intensely trained him when he was five years old, as a compelling story all the way to the Bobby Fisher child chest prodigy stories of the nineteen seventies. All these stories spurred on this ideology, and it's a compelling idea when our society has been on a pathway of increasing specialization in our careers in general skill sets since the Industrial Revolution. Before that, we had to be a jack of all trades just to survive. But have we lost something in specialization. I'm in search of the answer, and of all places that I'm gonna look for it, how about a basketball team in Bradleyville, Missouri. I love the audacity of it. My wife, Missy, and I are at our fourteen year old son, Shepherd nucam a a U basketball game. The a U is a summer league for up and coming ball players. The top players in the country played some type of a U ball, and the vast majority of NBA players played a U ball when they were young. In this gym, everyone's focuses on the kids on the court, but I find myself watching and listening to the parents. I'm often amazed at their intensity and the wild things that they say to the referees and the wild stuff they say to their kids. But I'm right there with them. I'm one of them, and I'll be at a biased assessment. Shepherd nucom is a baller with the capital beat. The boy tries to shoot a thousand three pointers every day and he would literally eat basketballs if they were a little bit smaller. But here's another question I'd like to understand in order to understand Bradleyville's basketball phenomena. Wow, this is intense. They broke his ankles, so misty. Basketball is a great sport for smaller rural schools in in America. Basketball you don't need eleven players, you don't need a huge football field. You only really only need five players. You can practice at your house with just a single hoop, a rim, a basketball goal. Why do you think rural schools loves basketball some months, Well, basketball is a great sport in rural communities because you don't have the population base to secure a full on football team. I mean, you go to a football game and they've got thirty six forty kids out there. At basketball, you need five main players eight. You know, eight kids will give you a good backup. It doesn't require a lot of money. You know, you need a gym. Most schools have that. But individual kids, though, can put hoops up outside their house. They don't need a lot of fancy contraptions. I mean, it's not like how many kids that we're looking at, So Shephard is not in the game right now. How many of these boys do you think of killed bears and have coon dogs. I can't answer that question. But what I'm really asking is are these elite young athletes growing into diverse people that can be successful in life? I know that's the question Missy and I are asking about our own children. Are we setting them up for success? The draw to extreme specialization is enticing to a kid and to parents. But let's get back to our conversation about why rural areas like basketball. Obviously it's not just rural places that love hoops. It's probably more known as an urban sport. But when all you have is basketball and all your eggs are in one basket, you have the opportunity for a blaze of glory or utter failure. I want to introduce you to one of the best basketball stories I've ever heard, and touches home deeply with me because it involves some incredible ballers, some coon hunters, in the building of the Missouri basketball dynasty with records that have stood for over sixty years. Leon Combs is eighty seven years old, but I would have believed him if he said he was sixty seven. He's spry, with a tent of eyes and a sharp mind and a voice fit for radio. I'm sitting in his home in Bradleyville, overlooking a stunning view of the Ozarks. In he wrote a book called The Hicks from the Sticks. It's about the Bradleyville basketball era. Bradleyville is in Taney County in southwest Missouri and today has a population of eighty people. It's located about thirty miles east of the famed music show town of Branson, Missouri, in the rural Ozarks. Mr Combs didn't play basketball during the Dynasty years. He played ten years prior. But he's going to introduce us to Bradleyville basketball before their meteoric rise. I went to school here and played basketball here, but Bradleyby on those days. What's the tiny school. We did have a gymnasium and we played outdoors. We had an outdoor, we held board backboards. We had rims with no nats on them. I think the rents were made by local blacksmith and we would play out there in the mud. And the rain and snow, we try to play. We did, and then um we got a coach who when I was a sophomore I think, interested in the subregional tournament in Branson, as it calls the days. Well, we were, you know, seated last and we played Branson uh first night, which was a big school compared to won the state championship the year of our They beat a sixty four to six. I was in that game. Then I think, we want to I played four years on the basketball team. We lost every game we played except two. We want two games years? Was that fifty three? I graduated in nine. You know, I just we just we didn't expect to win. But we left to go to other schools to play because we got to play on a gym, you know, with the ball would bounce straight. You know, we could dribble the ball halfway. During my senior junior year, they decided to build a gymnasium. They appropriated a hundred dollars to build a gym, but they got a lot of volunteer labor and materials and so forth. They build a gymnasium and put a tile floor in it. I helped drop. They had us boys going over with sand rock and smoothed out the concrete so the tile would stick. Finally got it down in the very first game we played. We played Spokane, first game Bradley ever played indoors at home. The concrete had been poured directly on the ground and it started sweating, and so that tile got a slick as ice. It's like we're playing on ice rink. We had to call the game at halfway because guys were just busting her head just slidely on that thing already dangerous. So the story is is that Bradleyville was not a good athletic school at the time. We were at the bottom of heap. Everybody just beat the heck hours, I mean, would't even I hate to admiture. This was rural Ozarks. I think the school in those days was not even accredited by the state, winning two games in four years, building a gymnasium that was almost unusable. You can feel the humiliation hovering over this community like a thick fog. Sadly, this community had given all they had, but it didn't stand up to the standards of the time. The entire school first through twelve had about sixty students. The people in the community lived in what the Times called poverty and primarily worked as loggers and subsistence farmers. These people worked hard, and sports success was a luxury. But after the gym was built, a glenn of hope arose. Redeville was getting better once they give They got the gymnasium in nineteen fifty three. And they've always had good strong boys, A lot of big, tall kids did the typical bill hillbilly, I guess, and they just had some good talent, but they never did never had any chance to developer, never had a good coach. They started getting some coaches towards the end of the fifties, and then in nineteen sixty one they were they didn't have a coach, they didn't have a superintendent. And Burt Horner was on the school board and he had heard about a couple of brothers over in Blue Eye Blue Ahmasaria and Blue Eye, Arkansas, and so he went on up and talked to Omar Gibson about the possibility of being superintendent and to his brother Ray Gibson about being a coach. They they talked to negotiated and end up signing a deal, a package deal for ten thousand dollars a year that Omar I was superintendent, we get six thousand, and Ray as coach get four thousand. So they agreed that and Ray Gibson was a was a great coach. He was a young coach. He didn't know how good he was. He told me he came over here. He said, I never saw some raw talent. I don't never starting strong boys. I never saw a young man who are so eager to learn. They listened to. I told them they were so easy to coach. He so I could run them to death and they would never complain. And so he said they were a great condition and all they needed was some basics and fundamentals and someone We're doing pretty well. So they started playing games in the nineteen sixty two and Ray coached him hard. He he emphasized sportsmanship. He said, I don't ever want to see any attitude problems. I don't want to see argue with a referee. I don't want to see argue with a calling of no matter how bad they call it is. He said that they won the first tournament that year and the first one that they ever had ever want to tournament before, and they won the Sportsmanship Award and from then on through the sixties rather be one of sportsmanship award and every every tournament they played there. There are three things that just happened, and I'll list them numerically for your listening needs. Number One, the beginning of hope for the team began with a coach who believed in the boys despite their historical record. Number Two, it's inferred, but the difficulty of the life of these boys and the Ozarks made them coachable, tough, and extremely hard workers. Number Three, a core philosophy of the team was sportsmanship. Leon Combs moved away from Bradleyville after he graduated high school and assumed he'd never come back. Now he's going to tell us about his extreme shock when he saw his old alma mater, Bradleyville having a winning season. And I was living in Columbia then. That was in nineteen two. I started reading about Brudneyville. So you'd moved away from your I've been gone since fifty three. I've been a Marine Corps. I've been I'd come back to visit my parents, but for just a weekend overnight and go up. I lost all attached. So I started seeing the newspapers stories of basketball in the springtime, the basketball tournaments, and Bradleyville was winning games and winning game. Wow, this is unusual. I had a brother who was a Jerry Colmes was a center on the team, and Lannie Colms and David Colms were my first cousins. Anyhow, I kept watching, and the next thing I know, they were coming to Columbia there on the final four. I couldn't believe this, So I went down to Old Brewer field House at the University Missouri there and I watched him play the semifinal game and they won it. And I watched the final game and they won that and just state championship, State championship. Yeah, state championship. In the course of ten years, Bradleyville went from the humiliation of Southwest Missouri to the nineteen sixty two Class S Missouri State Ampiens and S stands for small. This was absolutely incredible for this community. Here's Mr Leon Combs telling us why he named his book The Hicks from the Sticks. One of the games that from bradley was playing in the Blue Gold Tournament. They're playing part view. They call him a jolly Green Giants or color green. They had won the state championship before. That's where the name of the book came from. The day the game was going to be played. People calling into k w t O radio in Springfield talking about the game tonight, which from Undefeated Bradleyville an undefeated part view and uh one guy called. They said, well, you know, Bradleyville may be good down there, and they played those little schools down there in South Missouri. But PA, I can tell you one thing. Those hicks from US Sticks are gonna meet their match tonight. They went up there and uh, Gary Kelder played on the part of few team. I'll be underviewed him fifty years later. Gary said, we couldn't believe leeve the struggle were having those team and he said they called time out and he said that they were huddling close to our bench there. He said, Dwayne Margot had curly black hair. Dwyne always had a comb in his shock. He carried a calmb he camed his hair doing a game and they were sitting there a call in time out in front of mention. He was combing his hair and calling. I said that. One of players said, are you pramp and comb your hair doing the game all the time? He said, I'm only one. I know we're gonna win and get a picture. Took only one. I had to beat hig part and the coach told me our jealous said that was that when was more gratifying to me than the state championship. I want to now introduce you to the court general of that team, Leon Boyd. He was a senior in nineteen sixty two and today he's seventy eight years old. He still looks like he could be me and one on one. I'm standing in his home, nine miles north of Bradleyville, on the land he was born on and still lives on to this day. In his living room, there are three white tail racks, a wooden clock with the image of a raccoon behind the hands of the clock, uncountable photos of his family, and lots of pictures of dogs, coon dogs. He's showing a newspaper to my son, Shepherd. So this is a the Branson Sports Tri Lakes newspaper. This is April night two and there's a picture of the nineteen sixty two Bradleyville Eagles celebrate sixty years. So this was your sixty year class reunion, Yes, sixty years, And they put a picture of the basketball team that won the state championship. Where are you at? Mr? Leon? And he didn't look at day older and they in that picture doesn't show see the year we took state there Branson played for state the same place with playing and they got beat the second we want to beat Branson. They was a large school with small you know, and they got beaten. And they had ballroom all set up for their celebration, you know, but they got beat that night. And but they they're deal at Branson anyway, had us down there for a meal or two. You know, you guys were the heroes and the big the bigger school got beat. Who's all friends? You know? One things back then? And ever read read that byline for me, all right. Members of the nineteen sixty two state Class S basketball champions our front row, Bill Roberts and Jerry Combs in back row Coach Ray Gibson, Leon Boyd's Roy Combs, Darryl Paul, Eddie Hunts, Saker and Matt Wakeley. I was a little guy, but you were You were the ball handler when they when they needed to get through a press, they passed it to you there, right. That seemed to be the way it happened. You know that kind of sounds like the way I would describe you ball handler. I don't always get to bring my kids along when I travel, but I really wanted my son's shepherd to meet Leon Boyd. I think they might have a lot in common. I think you can hear it. But Mr Boyd is an unusually humble man, which is an honorable trait. I want to ask him specifically about the state championship. So what do you what would you say is your most significant memory of winning that state championship and and that being the first one that Bradleyville had won one ever Sportsman Chip trophy that there was that here, I'd say that's my best memory. We had a coach and he was just always smiling when you look Debaine. He would never mean and he was a good coach really, so he he didn't get intense with you guys. How how did he motivate you? Well, he just let us play ball and he'd tell us what to do and and we just pay attention to him. Now, I assume he really worked you guys hard though, I mean he worked you hard in practice, that's just part of it. We enjoyed the practice as much as the game. You know, it's all fun. The only other thing I've done this about was coon hunt, so you know that's that the whole plan was fun to me. I really enjoyed it. When did you start coon hunting? Probably when I was Levin when they started letting me carry a gun by myself. Go, well, we had no hound half hound that would tria, cooner or squirrel either one. And and then Barrel Mayer gave me my first hound, and he was your bus driver. He had my bus driver. Was that first town? Any good? Would it? Trick? Trick coon? It like a lot being perfect kind of like me, you know, but in Treer coon and so you've had you've had dogs and coon hunted ever since then? Yeah, yeah, all my life I have and still enjoyed. It was something I could do when I wouldn't have worked. You know, I could hunt at night and other things. You know, I needed to work in daytime to coon hunt at night. I could work in the daytime and I could coon hunt at night. Now that's some functional rationale. Here's Mr leon Comb's given us some insight into how the upbringing and lifestyle of these boys plays into the story. But don't get to nostalgic about winning one state championship, because that's just the beginning. They won some more. It feels like the work ethic and kind of the fabric of the character of these boys was formed by hardships inside of their life that would have come from poverty, would have come from living in a rural area, would have come from not having any extras inside of their life. And it feels like that played into their success and and a lot of them later in their success in life. Can you talk to me about that? Well, Leon Boyd here who you're gonna talk to. He comes to a very poor family, and uh, when it came time to buy a letter jacket basketball letter jacket, he couldn't afford it. He didn't have any money. So the boys took up a collection and bought him. He still wears it today, he's seventy years old. He still fits in it. There are a lot of poor people, I think I wrote in the book about Hollywood. Run along the highway and pick pop bottles up the glass pop bottles. They get two cents for him and get to get the money. And they would buy cartons milky when those they didn't have free lunches in no days. If you didn't have any money, you didn't eat. So they had a little carton s milk you get for ten cents, I think, so they have that. So literally a lot of these boys came from before they barely had enough to eat, and they worked hard. They had to milk cows and feed hogs. So the boys grew up in and very poor Faminist, but they were taught the morality, the right things to do. They they would never think about those days. Ye mean that I thought about smoking a mari want a cigarette was just out out the colt. I mean, wouldn't even touch it or any other kind of dope. And mostly a lot of guys didn't even drink. It was a work ethic is in the community. Everybody started to work. If someone was on welfare, they were they were almost disgraced in the community. A lot of people people would almost starve before they were going welfare because of the disgrace attached to it. But I don't know what made the community what it was, but it was. It was a beautiful community from a standpoint of humanity and loving each other and helping each other. You know, farmers would help each other. You come over and work for me, putting on my hay, and well, I don't talk about paying you that I come and help you. And uh. People they were just good neighbors and uh they were very proud of this community. And as we tell this story, it's a story. You know, most stories have to need a protagon in an antagonist to tell her good story. Well, um, and telling this story the protagonists. The good is the community, it's the team, it's the boys. The antagonists is the world that pushes against us. This is an insightful statement from Leon Combs. When we look back in history, it seems that things were more simple, and in many ways this is true, but they still had complicated lives. Roy and Jerry Combs were cousins and played with Leon Boyd in that nineteen sixty two state championship team. Their grandfather was named John Riley Combs, and he was the sheriff of Taney County, Missouri. During Prohibition. His sons, who would have been Roy and Jerry's father and uncle, were caught making and selling moonshine, and rather than letting his sons go to prison, sure if John Riley Combs claimed that the Stills were his and he served six months in Leavenworth Prison in Kansas. He took the heat for his sons. There's another story of one of the families selling a cow so they could afford to travel to Columbia to go to the state championship game. Life was simple, but it was also hard. Here's Leon Combs talking to us about how good Leon Boyd's team was in nineteen sixty two. You'll hear them mentioned one of the players, Darryl Paul. He was a real ringer. Here's what the coach, Ray Gibson said about this team. He said that the boys were great. They were they were easy to coach. And he said, I wasn't surprised what the state not surrivor? He said they lost a couple of games that Europe, but he said we shouldn't have lost. Talks. Yeah, the couple of they lost Leon Boyd was six, Yes, is that what they said? There was another something like that, and then they were they were playing a big school. They were playing They be Joplin, which was a school two thousand students. Brother I had had sixty or seventies students in the whole school. Yeah, that's at the Blue and Gold Tournament in Springfield, Darrell Paul had the record for the most points scored and that stood from two. Finally he was broom and you know they started three points in the tournament. It was a record for that tournament or for that tournament, for that tournament, it was before the three point line, so he was hitting what would have been counted as studies. And the people who be him, of course, they had most of the three porters, right. Yeah, So I mean if they said, if they had done Darryl Paul three parts, he still hold the record. Well, and they and a lot of guys said that we're in the know and new basketball at that time that he was potentially one of the best spot shooters ever. In the statement had that from Charlie spood charge he said, I watched his kid plays. I've never seen anybody could catch the ball and released it almost instantly. I mean, it reminded why I see Steph Curry played. Yeah, he probably wasn't going to Stephen Curry because in those days, boys didn't have a au camps or summer night. We weren't allowed to play on a summer nime. I think the real thermometer for how good this team was was in that they were beating schools that were twenty times their size. As a side note, this great shooter Darryl Paul who played with Leon Boyd on this team. He sadly passed away at the age of seven in the nineteen seventies from cancer. I want to get some more from this coon hunting point guard, Mr. Boyd. I want to hear his story. You you look like you're in great shape right now. You look like you could outrun me right now. Probably deceiving. So you were. You were kind of on the team that brought an upswing that kind of started this Bradleyville streak of about six or seven years where y'all are really good. Kind of let people know where Bradley Bill was. Yeah, we had a lot of fun. So you were, you were a point guarden. As I understand that you've you've played basketball up into your adult life, just just for fun till seven and then I hurt my shoulder throwing a coon up maccree for the dog. Really, so you played basketball till you're seventy. Yeah, I played at St. John's. I've worked at twenty five year and plaid on the league up there, and then then I played Town Team Bowl, you know with guys. I like the longevity and passion of Mr Boyd playing organized basketball until he was seventy years old. And if you're gonna go down in an injury, why not go down doing the other thing that you loved, coon hunting. I think there's a plausible connection in the diversity in Mr Boyd's life the physical fitness game. By playing ball his whole life enabled him to stay active as a coon hunter. Or maybe it was the other way around, and it's possible that his coon hunting might have balanced out his passion for the game of basketball, allowing him to excel. I want to have a conversation about extreme specialization and the benefits of being a jack of all trades or a generalist. My wife, Mr. Nukeam, has run a high school sports program for many years. She's a PhD candidate at the University of Arkansas, and most of all, she's a die hard bee ball fan. We're gonna talk about a book titled Range by David Epstein that makes the case that generalists often succeed in a world that is demanding increasingly specialization. Will also talk about the youth Sports World. I want to see what she has to say. The example that I'm most identifying this book is the example of Tiger Woods, which was a narrative that was kind of put on us in a pretty significant way because his dad really pushed him as a child. He was playing golf by the time he was three or four, and there was this extreme specialization that pushed him to become the greatest golfer in the world. And the idea was that that's what you should do in life. So we took this. You know, golf is like the game of life. The other example that the author uses his chess. Well, what Epstein says is that those were pretty much false narratives for most of life. He said that in super predictable situations, like on a golf course, there's always a t box, there's always a hole, it's just slightly different. In those situations, extreme specialization is beneficial, But in most of life extreme specialization isn't as beneficial. And what in the whole book is about how generalists, people that that didn't specialize in one thing but ended up becoming experts in something else that they were never even trained in. And his whole thing is is that by being a generalist, we learn how to respond to the irregularities that life throws at us. Yeah, I think that that narrative of you should really focus in on one thing. It probably comes from, you know, parents getting a certain level of identity from their kids performance and wanting them to be really good. It probably comes from just in general, a focus on happiness and what makes our you know, wanting our kids to be good at things. Question I think you're asking, is is that good? It Is it good to have that sort of extreme focus in one area. And we're seeing this more in children's sports and use sports, and we've seen it with our own son. We experienced personally like a real push too. He did have some native talent, and so people wanted us to make schooling decisions around that, like where we lived, life decisions around that, and then how our family operated, and we kind of put some boundaries around that saying no. And I there's a lot of arguments about this, like our athletes better if they just play one sport. And I'm obviously a little bit more towards the general starea, not just in sports but in life. I think that we're better people if we're more well rounded. So when I was in high school, pretty much if you were a good basketball player and you went to play college basketball, it was just a much more simple process. Today, they are prepping these kids from the time they're young. If you're not in the world, you'd be shocked. I mean you would be shocked to find out the amount of money that's going into getting kids trained personal trainers. We're talking elementary school and flying kids into play on teams. It's it's pretty wild. And and again I think that as a there's an elite group of kids who might be able to do that in high school and that might actually be beneficial for them or even in college. But to start all kids at elementary I think that's pretty pretty narrow focus to put on a seven year old. Don't get me wrong, we love sports. We love the discipline and work ethic that it builds. But we try to deal with sports on our terms and make sure our kids are balanced. I have another question for missing, what do you think about my connection with Leon Boyd and all. A lot of these guys were coon hunters and had this rural, diverse experience of life. Basketball wasn't their main focus. We're kind of using this story just to look into this big question of specialization versus being a generalist. But what do you think? I think what you're really highlighting is that there were some character traits that were built in their lifestyle at home, in their lifestyle when they went coon hunting, that were also evident in their lifestyle at basketball. And we're being pushed right now to push our kids towards these skills and these very specific niches of development, when the reality is what kids need are these developmental, more internal, character based things, and then those can be applied to a whole number of areas. But it's not just about should you be a hunter or should you be a baller? It's what should we really be developing in young people? Is it? Should we really be so focused on my opic functionality inside of one thing versus building a holistic person and then allowing them to apply those skills in lots of different areas. Good point, miss snookem and she hasked some more to say. Malcolm Gladwell wrote a book like twenty years ago, and it talked about and it popularized this view of the ten thousand hour rule that to be an expert at something, you have to vote ten thousand hours to it. And so a lot of people started, you know, talking about like real targeted practice for ten thousand hours and and doing a lot of different things to to make yourself an expert. But the reality is most of us are experts at one to five things in our whole life, if even that meant I mean, I remember when I was trying to learn the banjo. The ten thousand hour rule was kind of overwhelming to me, and then I watched this Ted talket. It was like, wait a second, the ten thousand hour rule is what made the Beatles the Beatles. I'm not trying to be a performance artist. I just want to pick up my porch and it takes about thirty hours to learn how to pick on your porch. And I was like, oh, I could I could give thirty hours to something. And I think that, you know, playing the banjo has added a lot of dimensions. That's a great example. I find that people are massively intimidated by the experts. And who who are the people that we see a media talking about all these things experts? My example is trim and mule feet. Okay, I'm not a ferrier, I'm not an expert at trim and mule feet. But guess what, it's not rocket science. But there are people who have literally devoted their lives to triman and shoeing horses and mules. I refused to be intimidated by the experts, and I dabble in a lot of stuff, and I absolutely love it. And it makes you think about you. Interviewed Robert Morgan, who is a New York Times bestselling author wrote the book Moon. Tell about that conversation. I said, uh, we were We weren't recording. We were eating lunch. We're eating a ham sandwich that his wife had made us at his house in rural New York. And he and I said, Mr Morgan, what would you say is the one thing that's made you most successful in your career as a writer. He said, I'm a good historical writer because I'm first a poet. And that's what stands out about Robert Morgan's writing. He could learn the discipline and skill of being an academic historian, but he had developed over a lifetime the art of being a poet. And so when he got the history, and he had the writing skills and creative artistic skills of being a poet, and when those came together, it created my favorite books. We've put quotes that Robert Morgan wrote in his biographies about people on our wall very interesting. The overall point I'm taking home is that having broader interest helps us be successful in all areas of life, and being a generalist may actually help you become a highly functional expert in an area unconnected to the expertise. But hey, we gotta talk some Bradleyville beball. I now want to move past the first state championship of nineteen sixty two, and here the wild story of the next six years on the court. Here's Mr Leon Combs. So they started really doing good in the early nineteen sixties. Was this team with Darryl Paul, Leon Boyd Jerry Combs. Tell me what happened from there? The Ray Gibson won that state championship, and he gotta offered a big job. He went to Waynesville, Missouri, and I have much good job. This was the coach. Yeah, because he'd been there one year, one state championship, took a team that never wanted to turn about it at all, and took him to win the state champions So he got a better job. And they hired a guy from Lead Hill, Arkansas, named Argel Ellison never had to coach at all. He was brand new, went to Tellque, Oklahoma, to college, and he came up here and he started coaching UH in sixty two. The following sixty two had good teams sixty two. Every year they won. They were always just a notcher two from going to state championship. They lost their coach, Ray Gibson. But it seemed the momentum of the state championship in sixty two spurred the younger kids watching to dedicate themselves to basketball. So coming along about that time, it was another group of boys who played grade school ball. When the sixty two team won the state championship, and that was David Colmes and Lonnie Colmes and Dwayne Maggart and a couple other guys. This grade school team Arjoe Ellison. So I could see we had some really good at these And then and they were in high school and UH sixty four and they started winning games and they almost went to state in sixty four and in sixty six. From my brother Joe, who runs the store at Bradleyville over here is five miles away. The only store there. He was a senior in sixty six and they were down. They were playing Greenwood High School, Springfield, and they if they won this game, they were going to go to state. And the game was tied at the end of the regulation. But one of the guys has fell best foul shooter on the team, so he had two shots coming and the game was tied. Time was out. The game depended on the freshure. Brother Joe was always a joker. Rg Elsasser was joining good. He said, well he he kept the team loose because these are joker. They got in a huddle and Gary, and it's the guy's name was Gary, Joe the butt. Gary, you know you're gonna miss easecase. He said. Gary was the best free stro shooter on the team and he was just joking. Shars hack. Gary missed both free throwers. They went in overtime and lost the game. On the team and beat and won the stage championship. So in nineteen sixty six, Bradleyville made it to the state semifinals and lost in overtime. So now we'll fast forward to the season opener of nineteen sixty seven. This is when the incredible winning streak starts. In nineteen sixty seven. They started the season and they lost the game to Varda, and because David Combs had the flu, he was out and Lonny Combs out the great part he would compromise someway, so they lost that game. They didn't lose another game. They went all through the season and one every game went to state, won the state championship. They started the next year sixty seven eight. They won every game all year long, and following sixty seven the spring they they want to Columbia and won the state championship with that famous four overtime games. And so they won three state championships, went on a sixty four games, which is still a record unbroken today. Glasgow High School in Glasgow, Missouri has tied it but still hadn't been broken. The sixty four game winning streak was in nineteen sixty seven and sixty eight and it still stands as a record in Missouri high school basketball by this very unlikely team. When it comes to winning streaks, this should put it into perspective. The longest winning streak in NBA history is thirty three games won by the Los Angeles Lakers in the nineteen seventy two season. In college basketball. The second longest winning streak was the u C. L A men's team who won eight consecutive games between nineteen and seventy four, and they won seven consecutive championships. However, the longest winning streak in n C Double A basketball history was the Yukon women's basketball team that had a one and forty five game winning streak between nineteen fifty five and fifty seven. That's incredible. But I want to hear more about this famous nineteen sixty eight game against the Howardville Hawks. Some have said it was the greatest game in Missouri basketball history, and it had some interesting dynamics. Howardville, it was an all black school. It was their last year before they were going to be integrated into white school. There are gonna you know. They had a great coach and Mr Jackson Howardville by his name after a family of Elston Howard, the great New York Yankee, and so Mr Jackson was a coach. He was a older black man, and they had two big six ft six guys and two little guys about five five. And the big guys were good and the little guys were great. I mean they could dribble that ball. They were just fast as lightning and they had a great team and they were favored to win the state championship against Brunneville. So they went up there and Braddyville knew they were getting into it and they were highly favored. The other coaches experts said, Bradleyville have we'll meet their match tonight. And they they met them, and it was a seesaw game all the way through, and uh, David Collins played the whole game, and he played down under and he worked on r j Elsen told him, David, how do I get fouled? And he said, you gotta work on this big guy and get them fouled out because we can't we can't deal with that. So it sure enough, one of the guys filed out and then the other guy filled out and Davids to end the game. And uh, they were I think at one point, I'm pretty sure that we've lost this game. They were like ten points from behind. The crowd was all for Hartville. We had no they were playing in Colombia, Columbia. Of course we had a big contingent there from Bradleyville, but they were like seven thousand people in this gym. It was Waller wall St. And this is Bradleyville is a town of fifty sixty where it's a school of students. We probably had a hundred people from Bradleyville there. I was there, and you were there. I was like, oh yeah. And all basketball people in Bradleyville, if you ask them, they'll tell you they saw that game. I don't think they did, because it could have been that may fare, but it was such a famous game. And then I told you that they came down to the wire and Bradle tirely did in the last few seconds. They tied the game in regulation. Then they went into overtime and it was tired in the first over time, and it was tied in the second over time, and it was tied in the third our time, and then Bradlegille pulled it out finally barely and the fourth over time and won their sixty four consecutive game, the third state championship. Spoonhour Charlie Spooner was a great coach. He said that was the best game I ever saw him alive, college or pro whatever. Incredible and lucky for us, Mr Leon Combs has a treat for us. That game was broadcast by k R. E. S Radio and Mobile Missouri. And years later when I wrote the book, I went up there and got a real, real tape from them of the last minute of regulation time because they were there to broadcast the game for another school that would follow. This is a Class S championship. They were there the broad catch the game from boonvillem so Harder were waiting to do the Booneville game bretigs playing. They said, we tuned in about a minute with a regulation left, they tuned in to do that game. Here's the actual broadcast of the Class S State Championship Bradleyville versus Howardville game of nineteen Howardville and Bradley will Bradley wille the defending state champions coach by R. Joe Ellison. The play this bounsketball in Arkansas tech ball comes the ball will come in on the side. Howardville is coached by WILLIAMS. Jackson from Lam College. They come outside with the ball bounced, passed over to tape at long range. He hands the ball to William Gray Gray bibling outside now thirty nine seconds ago. William Thomas with the ball, Brother Thomas with the all outside babling all over he's five five, he's all, he's all over the flar. They comes in front of a circle who fans are plotting twenty five twenty three seconds pay with the ball he's putting on a dribling exquivation gives the ball is on that old but he's stood. He's told well called by nine. Will call tign up with thirteen seconds to go, and the fans are going wild. Thirteen seconds to go, all are filled by two fifty nine fifty seven. Ball comes into Magard, Magarth, Tellum, Pelum gives them all. The Combs comes with eight seconds with seven here's a turning on, Jeffrey, were you seconds? Two seconds? Tie up? With two seconds to go on Dave Comb shut it in with four seconds well to tie it up and it's hein going over time. Dave Combs Mr Leon Comb's cousin hide the game with two seconds left and regulation and it sends the game into overtime. It's interesting that these radio guys weren't even here to announce this game. They only came in at the last minute of regulation. They were here for the next game, which was a bigger school. Here's the last few seconds of the first overtime. Bob comes in to com bongs with five second fourth second three two one the ball they not go in its double overtime, still tied three more minutes in the second overtime. Here's the last ten seconds moving not do I talk here in waiting up one long time? Not the buzzer, not Cat looks on at fifth problem comin. What do you think about that? If? It's terrific crame? But I've got the team factor to play a ball handling in my life. There's there Howard Bille ballplayers to put on here tonight just great and uh they loved wheels against the ball club like Bradley they all that has got the record and uh really played tremendous basketball. But Howard bill Is is a great team to come back like they have many times tonight third overtime, you can fill the energy of the crowd. There's something primal and wild about a ruined crowd and it's hard to deny its emotional power. Here's the last three seconds of the third overtime. Howardville had scored with a few seconds left to tie the game. Have they have gone into three overtime? Three seconds through all calling fires at the length of the cart. Yet the blackboard all overtime. We're going for another overtime. Have you ever seen anything like this? This is the fourth overtime and by the last few seconds Bradleyville is up by two points and they're at the foul line. The announcers seem a little bit spent. Market is the pole line and Dave Combs in the number two rebound position of left. All others have been dropped by first one up that it is good, gladly though it looks like they have defended their crown here tonight. It is up. That is no good if all brought out of that A gray comes up with two seconds he took the jump cut. It is no good. The final card playing with lively coy beleave gladly though the friends are crowned and badly quot fire Arjuel Ellison of Arkansas that when's the class best championship for the second consecutive year, and when's their fifties third ball game and a roll in the doing. Incredible win for Bradleyville. What more can be said except that Dave Combs, Mr. Leon's first cousin was also a big coon hunter and he would go on to play college basketball at Arkansas Tech, and one of the driving influences of why he chose that school was the a t U coach was also a coon hunter, and he said that he'd coon hunt with him if he went to college there, coon hunters and basketball seemed to go hand in hand. By the mona yes, h, I'm at Leon Boyd's house nine miles north of Bradleyville. The old point guard has a yard full of English and bluetick hounds. It's a beautiful sight to a coon hunter, and it's a beautiful sound to hear the dogs barking just before dark. They know what's about to happen. We're going coon hunting. So what's what's this dog's name? Kay? This playing k came nice looking blue TiO. We jump in Mr. Boyd's board ranger and head off behind his house. Shepherd nukelem my basketball player is riding in the back with two hounds. There's a limb and this limbs yeff. We drive about a half mile and we can still hear the dogs at the house. But the old dogs we've gotten the truck begin to bark and they act like they're winding a coon from the truck. We're in luck, we stop and let them out. Well, they act like they're smelling one, don't they. Yeah, I'd say, yeah, they sure do. Well, let's cut them loose. Get you guys, hear her, and get you loose. There there you go. Yeah, they act like they're smelling one. Now that one dog will rig from the truck. And she was barking. Oh her, let's see him. Listen to him, hearty warm track. Thank Well, there was a big shooting star. Did you see that. I wasn't looking. Yeah, a huge shooting star just went across this guy. The dogs take the track about a quarter mile down the creek and begin to bark tree. That means they think they've found the tree that raccoon ran up. We're now walking in to see these dogs. There's a treat on a leaning tree. It looks like you told him. I figured that this food. Remember set when lamb grove down into this tree, it could use that tree on this side of the bank. Crossed over in the camp of peach to the other side, and the dogs pretty much stayed on this side tree. And I'd say that's what happened. Yeah, Old Ricky raccoon fooled him again, I'd say it did. Mr Boyd elaborates on his stage of life Shephard and I listen intently. Glasses and false teeth, and old age is kind of rough on a feller. I would say it's seventy eight years old for you to just walk down that mountain like you did and come retrieve these dogs. You're doing real good. I still enjoy but this can't enjoys much of it, you know. I bet you you being physical playing basketball until you were seventy has really helped you though, stay fit, you know. Yeah, i'd say it did. Huh. And I enjoyed it ever, every bit of it, you know. It just well got too old finally, I reckon. But and I guess probably Lord will and I'll get too old coon, huh, But I hope I'd rather. I'd rather leave it. It's a world right here. Out of here Coon hunting is in the best hospital in the world. Yeah, just joy these woods. Yeah, and I'd like to see young UN's like Shepherd there getting to enjoy hunting. Yeah. He's an awful lot of things going on in this old world that ain't near as clean as sport as Coon hunting is. As we head back to the house and then load the dogs were finished for the evening, but I wanted to ask Mr Boyd one more thing. Tell me what advice, what advice you'd give you'd give Shepherd with his basketball? Do you best and enjoy it? And probably six a year from now they'll be talking about it. I mean, you can't beat it. Do you like that? Hardy? Yeah, It's it's pretty amazing that here you are seventy eight years old and and everybody's still talking about your senior year of basketball. That's that doesn't happen. A lot of people doesn't know it really, don't, you know. It's I mean, and I don't know why that my class would be that special, but they they was. I got to be part of it. So as we left Mr Boyd's house, I was most impacted by his humility. It wasn't something that was put on for show. It was just who he was, and it protruded from him with great force. I love the people of the Ozarks, and I'm not saying that all of them are humble, but the ones who lived their lives close to the land usually are. As we pull away from the old house, Shephard says, Dad, is Mr Boyd gonna be one of your friends like James Lawrence. James is a dear friend of our family. I told him that I just met Mr Boyd and he lives a long way from us, and that I hope to see him again, but I didn't have plans to. And Shepherd said, Dad, it seems like if he's gonna be on your podcast, you shouldn't just never see him again. And I say, well, do you want to come back over here and hunt sometime? And he said, yes, I do. I think Shepherd was impacted by being around Mr Boyd knowing that he was an accomplished baller and coon hunter. At this stage in his life, Shepherd really isn't that interested in coon hunting, though he goes with me, and he's been too more tree dogs than either one of us can count. His primary focus his basketball, But my hope is that the exposure to something so radically different than sports will have expanded his horizon, increased his real life ability to solve problems and to give him empathy for people in all walks of life. Don't get me wrong, Chip loves to hunt, but I really don't care what he does. I just want him to be a successful human and mostly I want him to value character above everything, and I do hope that that humility, like Mr Boyd has, is a key definer for his life. The Bradleyville basketball dynasty story is incredible. We've used it to explore the ideas around benefits of specialization versus being a generalist. I know there can be great benefits, but the modern narrative of extreme specialization isn't always the best option. I was never a golfer like Gary Nucom wanted me to be, but later in life I have diversified and it's paid off for me big. Maybe this conversation will make you think about yourself and your kids. I can't thank you enough for listening to Bear Greece. You can by Lee Uncomb's book The Hicks from the Sticks online and it comes with a CD of the entire four overtimes of that state championship game. Secondly, I'd like to thank Dr Brooks Blevins of Missouri State for giving us the hot tip on this story. Please leave us a review on iTunes and share our podcast with somebody this week. Thanks and I look forward to talking more with all the render crew next week.