A Labor of love: A former coach archives Missouri sports history

By Max Goodwin

Growing up in Jefferson City, Jack Garvin dreamed of one day playing centerfield for the St. Louis Cardinals. That never panned out. 

Instead, Garvin earned a golf scholarship to the University of Missouri and became a teacher in the Hickman Mills School District for 29 years, teaching at Ervin Junior High, Hickman Mills, and Ruskin. When he retired from the school district, Garvin took a job for 13 more years at St. Teresa’s Academy as assistant athletic director, golf coach and history teacher. 

“I loved it. Just loved it,” he says. 

Garvin now pours that passion into publishing books detailing the history of amateur sports in Missouri. He collected the names and details through newspaper articles, school yearbooks, and library collections. The books allow readers to flip through the history of Missouri high school sports, from last season’s results to the beginning of the sport.

A book on basketball lists state champions in each class each year as well as the All-State teams. The books are a reflection of the sports that he cares about. So far, that includes basketball, track & field, football, and golf. He also has archived the history of the Suburban Athletic Conference, which includes local schools Grandview and Ruskin.

His book Missouri State High School Track & Field Championships lists champions and top three finishers in each state track & field meet going back to the first in 1903. 

One of his favorite stories is how the second official state track & field meet in 1904 was held at the Olympic Stadium in St. Louis, the same year that the 1904 Summer Olympics were also held in St. Louis. 

“And the state high school track meet was held as the opening event of the 1904 Olympics,” Garvin said.

Garvin thought a book of track and field would be too big. But his friends who requested it were past pole vaulting state champions. In the early 60s, these pole vaulters reached heights unheard of as the sport transitioned from steel poles to fiberglass.

He originally wanted to write a book that only spanned the years that he and his fraternity brothers had attended Mizzou. But he found there was always another year of results, athletes, and histories to look at. 

“Of course, once you start, you can’t stop. I just had to keep going,” Garvin said.

Garvin has also started chronicling modern-day games. He began assembling statistical updates as he attended games after retiring. He emailed his updates to local coaches and administrators not sure if anybody would pay attention to them.

His stats updates were so detailed and usable that eventually the schools and conferences offered to pay him for his work. Garvin now earns $50 per team per year, paid to him by 28 schools for his daily updates of standings, scores, and stats. 

Garvin says it’s easy to get distracted by history and find himself enthralled in reading newspaper articles of the past as he does research for his books. That’s part of the fun in it. 

For Garvin, so many of the stories that come out of the books are personal. He can point out state champions at Hickman Mills and the coaches who helped them learn their sport. 

“Hickman Mills won Missouri state back in ‘79, I think it was. One of my old roommates was the head track coach, and he was just a fanatic about track. He loved it,” Garvin said. “He loved to coach pole vaulters. He would take them from when they had never done anything.”

Most sports enthusiasts interested in buying Garvin’s books are those whose names are in them, past state champions or all-state athletes, or relatives, who want to remember when they were young and at the top of their sport. 

He mentions the reason he chronicles sports statistics in his book Missouri High School Basketball. He writes that he began this labor of love watching the 1954-55 Missouri Tigers basketball team as a ten-year-old. He discovered that the 1952 All-State High School team featuring Norm Stewart, Lionel Smith, and Red Reichert, all wound up starting for the Missouri Tigers in 1955.

“This then is a tribute to all the young men and women who will remain forever 17 years old in this book as they relive those glorious seasons,” Garvin writes.

For more information on Jack Garvin’s history of Missouri sports books, contact jgarvin1944@gmail.com.