If you make it to the end of this column, and I hope you do, I want you to remember one thing: This all happened because the Blair Oaks football team became the No. 1-ranked team in Class 2.
That's what I kept telling myself when I spent countless hours during the month of May scanning through years of research on the News Tribune's microfilm reader.
It all began Oct. 22, 2018, when Blair Oaks took over the No. 1 ranking after Lamar lost to Cassville, ending a 57-game win streak. When I began piecing together a story for that week's Missouri Media Rankings, I wanted to answer the obvious question: When was the last time Blair Oaks was ranked No. 1?
To answer that question, you have to start at the present and work your way back, week by week, poll by poll. If you skip a week or miss a poll, it could lead to an inaccurate finding and a future correction.
I thought my research would take a few minutes. Instead, it took about three hours.
It was the 59th consecutive week Blair Oaks had appeared in the top 10 in the state rankings, but the Falcons weren't No. 1 in any of those previous 58 polls, so I had to keep digging through archived PDFs on our server. And I kept digging, and digging.
Finally, after sifting through more than 100 weeks of state rankings, I learned Blair Oaks was last ranked No. 1 following Week 2 of the 2007 season. I spent close to half my work shift that day trying to find the answer to one simple question, but if even one person reading the story would have asked the same question, it was worth it.
At the end of the day, I thought, "There has to be an easier way to do this." There was, but it took me almost a year to come up with an idea.
At the end of last summer, I decided to begin digging back into our archives and document every high school football poll we've published into an Excel spreadsheet. Sure, now I know the last time Blair Oaks was ranked No. 1 (the correct answer is now following Week 9 of the 2019 season), but if we ever need to look up the last time Jefferson City or Helias were ranked No. 1, that task will only take me 5-10 minutes, not 5-10 hours.
Then I decided I could be more productive and multitask on this project. We have season-by-season records and records versus opponents for the Jefferson City and Helias football teams in our archives, but I hadn't seen anything for Blair Oaks. Since I cover Blair Oaks football, and as long as I'm already looking up old state rankings, why not kill two birds with one stone?
The problem is, this was going to be a time-consuming project, and the fall sports season was about to begin, so after a couple days of sifting through the archives, I had to put my research project on hold.
Then, in mid-March, the coronavirus pandemic halted all sporting events, and suddenly, I found myself with more time at the office to resume my project.
Our PDF archives only date back to 2006, so it was time to pull out our microfilm reader. I had never used one before, which makes me sound like such a millennial, so sports editor Tom Rackers graciously took the 30 seconds to show me how. However, every day of work turned into me constantly pestering him with "Do you remember this?" or "Can you tell me more about that?" questions. I'm sure hiding the microfilm reader from me was a thought that crossed his mind more than once.
Based on my two objectives, you would think my eyes were just scanning for final scores of Blair Oaks football games and weekly state football polls. Instead, I was sucked into the happenings of each day's sports section from late August to early December each year, and the occasional Calvin & Hobbes comic strip once I made my way back into the mid-1990s.
I finished my project about a week ago, going all the way back to 1976, when Blair Oaks played its first varsity football game. Coincidentally, that was around the same time the publication of the state football rankings in the News Tribune became scarce, so it was the perfect stopping point.
After about a month's worth of research, I can tell you the final score of every Blair Oaks football game. But I can also tell you so much more.
I've done a couple of similar research projects at my previous stop in Fayette. I find these exercises very beneficial, because learning about the past can make you a more knowledgeable writer in the future, especially if you're not from the area.
The things I've learned from this research could fill a book, but for the sake of this column, I'll just give you a handful of examples.
I've learned:
- Iberia and Vienna once had football programs, as late as the 1980s.
- There was once a time, in the 1970s, when Camdenton, Tipton and Iberia were all in the Tri-County Conference at the same time. I get it, enrollments can change from generation to generation - Nixa was a Class 2A football team in 1984, but last fall was in Class 5 - but this was still an eye-opening discovery.
- Adkins Stadium was previously called Public School Stadium, and Fleming Fieldhouse was previously called Public School Fieldhouse.
- The Show-Me Conference was previously named the OMMC Conference. The stories never spelled out the acronym, but after a couple minutes of deductive reasoning, my best guess is the letters stood for Osage, Maries, Miller and Cole counties.
- The News Tribune used to publish preseason conference basketball polls, with the voting done by each coach in the conference. Should we bring that back?
- In a district playoff championship football game in 1986, School of the Osage defeated California 5-2, in double overtime. I can't make this stuff up, folks.
- And lastly, during the 1992 football season, you could get a free seat cushion of your local team's choice of mascot with the purchase of a News Tribune subscription. That's an offer too good to refuse.
There were also a couple of other facts I had learned of prior to my research, but it was refreshing to come across them in the newspaper archives as well.
- Helias graduate and Blair Oaks football coach Ted LePage appeared on American Gladiators in 1992. Twitter spoiled this tidbit for me a couple summers ago, and I've only managed to track down one of his appearances on YouTube. But I haven't given up on my search of finding more.
- Blair Oaks previously played its home football games at Dwight T. Reed Stadium. I had been told of this last fall, when the Blue Tigers played their first night football game at home in decades, but I had no idea the Falcons didn't play their first football game at the Falcon Athletic Complex until 2006.
The past three months have been an unprecedented time for sports writers, who are craving for things to get back to normal as soon as possible with the resumption of sporting events at the high school, college and professional levels.
While the present looks bleak and the future looks uncertain, the one thing I do know is it has been a pleasure looking back on the past.
And when the Central Missouri Activities Conference officially arrives next month, and you want to know the last time Jefferson City was in a conference, I've got the answer for you.