MitchMash: Tying Joplin all together

President Barack Obama, prep basketball protégé Jabari Parker, reluctant NBA superstar Tim Duncan, author Chris Ballard, hip-hopper Nas and Joplin (Mo.) High School.

What on this twisted green-and-blue earth do these people and destinations have in common?

They are simply swirling and twirling in my head and I need somehow to tie them all together. Thank goodness for this keyboard and column space.

The most prevalent part of my noggin is still filled with the three-day visit MaxPreps Director of Photography Todd Shurtleff and I took to Joplin three weeks ago for our Beyond the X series, followed up by the powerful and poetic commencement speech made by Obama at the high school's graduation last week.

I'm thinking of Parker because I just watched him play last weekend at the Nike Elite Youth Basketball League just a couple of days after he donned the cover of Sports Illustrated, which featured one of the more enlightening and enjoyable sports profiles I've read in years. The story was not on Parker - though that was superb read as well - but on Duncan written by Ballard entitled "21 Shades of Gray."

In it, Ballard had 21 short vignettes that helped tie Duncan's remarkable career and unique personality into place.

So, like Nas' rap proclaims - "No Idea's Original," - I'm going to steal Ballard's format and list five of the president's most memorable excerpts from his speech and how they struck my Joplin chords.

See his entire May 21 commencement speech at Missouri Southern State University. It's worth it. 1. "The story of Joplin isn't just what happened that day, it's the story of what happened the next day. …and the day after that…and all the days and weeks and months that followed."

Our aim telling the story of Joplin wasn't to re-live the horror of the EF-5 tornado that destroyed roughly one-third of the town and took 161 lives. Rather, it was to tell a tale of how a school, specifically its athletic department and athletes and coaches, played games, competed in sport, rebuilt its programs and, by doing so, helped repair the student body's emotional core.

Our hopes were that this would prove as a blueprint for all other programs and schools who have had to start over because of either natural or financial ruins.

As then softball coach and now assistant athletic director Bruce Vonder Haar said, they all started with "a bag of balls and nothing much more." No uniforms. No schedule. No practice fields.

I thought football coach Chris Shields put it best.

"If you stop and think how much has to be done you can go crazy," he said. "The best way I know of doing this is to put your head down, do what you have to do next and then do what's next on the list after that."

Great simple but sure-fire advice for any entity facing a huge deficit or seemingly overwhelming obstacles.

Joplin's work, of course, is far from over. It has a 24-month to-do list a mile long. If all goes according to plan, in August of 2014, a new $90-million high school will stand on the same ground where the old one was destroyed.

The day after the president's speech – the one-year anniversary of the tornado – an emotional groundbreaking ceremony took place on that ground. It was part of a unity walk that stretched throughout the city and featured dignitaries throughout the region.

"It was a day to remind us how far we've come and a ceremony to celebrate what is yet to come," Joplin athletic director Jeff Starkweather said. 2. "In the next stage of your life, you'll face greed and selfishness and ignorance and cruelty and sometimes just bad luck. … You'll meet people who try to build themselves up by tearing others down. … You'll meet people who believe that looking after others is only for suckers. … But you're from Joplin. … You'll remember how many people see life differently, those who are guided by kindness and generosity and quiet service."

The theme of "you're from Joplin" – and you now answer to a higher calling - was woven beautifully by the president throughout his speech.

He noted the 50,000 or so "strangers" who passed through the town over the year and volunteered. He mentioned the big - the University of Missouri football team – and small - a Colorado resident who drove 600 miles with a chain saw and his three young children to help.

He noted a man, whose family was ravaged by the 2011 Tohoku tsunami, traveled all the way from Japan to "pay it forward." He reminded students to pay it forward in their lives as well, though many of them had clearly already done so.

Softball player Danielle Campbell promised to enter the emergency medical field after seeing how doctors and nurses responded in the aftermath of the tornado. Track sprinter Martez Wilson is inspired to do something extraordinary with his life – "like cure cancer" – after all the help his community received.

All-around athlete Kellie Stringer said almost all of her classmates volunteered throughout the year and will continue to do so in the future.

"It was a lot of work but considering all that people gave to us it was only right," she said. "It was awesome."

The athletes had great role models in their coaches and administrators, who quietly served for the good of the students. That wasn't lost upon Campbell.

"They dropped everything they had to deal with and help us," she said. "That was pretty amazing."

Quietest of all might have been Joplin native Starkweather, who gave up his summer and most of all free time during the school year to piece together the athletic department.

His own family was hit hard by the tornado – namely his only sibling Rick, who lost his home and Chick-Fil-A business. The Starkweather family stuck together, the fast food restaurant was rebuilt within a few months and business is better than ever.

Jeff's parents, Jerry and Linda (both in their 70s), serve not only as warm and popular greeters at the Chick-Fil-A but as reminders that – as the president said – "there are so many good people in the world. There's such a decency and a bigness of spirit." 3. "Some of life's strongest bonds are forged when everything around us seems broken."

There was evidence of that everywhere in Joplin. A school year seemingly lost, where students were moved to makeshift facilities and even split apart, turned out to be its tightest, according to the athletes we talked to.

"Before you might see someone in the halls and not say anything," Joplin junior football and wrestling standout Danny Drouin said. "Now you ask how they're doing and what is going on in their life."

The Eagles didn't clean up on the field. There were only a handful of teams that won more than they lost. At least that was on the scoreboard.

"Really none of that matter a lot," Wilson said. "Mostly we were just happy to have one another."

Said football player Austin Barnett, who was forced to move to Kansas after all four family homes were destroyed: "We now live way out in the boonies. But thankfully we still all have each other. That's all that really matters."

4. "You will not be defined by the difficulty you faced, but how you responded. With grace and strength and a commitment to others."

Those are the three adjectives I think of most when considering the people of Joplin.

When I think of grace and strength I think Mariah Sanders and Holly O'Dell, a pair of pole vaulters who displayed it literally during competition and off the runway in their own lives. 

Coaches noted Sanders' seamless progression from rebuilding her family home into the wee hours of the night to being a leader and top athlete on the softball diamond and the track. Never a complaint or missed practice.

O'Dell spoke with such poise and love about her grandmother, Vicki Robertson, who was killed in the tornado, and how she wants very much to be like her.

"She always stepped up to the plate," O'Dell said.

And if anyone had a right to take a free pass and watch from afar, it was Quinton Anderson, who lost both of his parents in the tornado and fractured his skull, broke his back and shattered an eye socket.

But he showed Herculean strength by captaining the football team, participating in baseball and, most of all, committing fully to a college education and his older sister's well-being.

Her name, poetically, is Grace.

According to the president, Anderson's motto in life now is "Always take the next step."  5. "Even though I expect some of you will end up leaving Joplin, I'm pretty confident that Joplin will never leave you."

I'm more than a little confident it won't leave me either. And I was there a mere 72 hours. 

I can honestly say that there are few moments since that visit – especially times of adversity – I don't think about the city, the school, its students or faculty. Photographer Shurtleff says he feels the same way.

We've made a pact, in fact, that anytime we feel stressed or short changed or in anyway overwhelmed, we'll recite our new favorite one-word mantra.

"Joplin."

It sure beats cursing.

Or giving up.



E-mail Mitch Stephens at mstephens@maxpreps.com or follow him on Twitter @MitchMashMax.