By Troy Hayes
MaxPreps.com
DECATUR – Mel Roustio has never tolerated selfishness.
He likes to illustrate that with a story about when he coached former Illinois great Andy Kaufman at Jacksonville High School. With the team aboard a bus for a Saturday road trip, Kaufman, arriving late, drove into the high school parking lot as the bus was pulling out.
“One of the guys yelled ‘Stop the bus, there’s Andy,’” Roustio told the Decatur Herald & Review a few years ago. “I looked out the window and told everyone to wave. We weren’t stopping for one kid that couldn’t be there on time.”
Roustio, now nearly 70 and running the Team Soy Capital Decatur Turkey Tourney for the past seven years, still has a love for selflessness.
“When I coached I asked all of my players to surrender themselves to a greater cause. This is no different,” Roustio said of running the tourney. “When we started bringing in sponsors for the tournament, I asked them to do the same and they stepped up and did that.”
When Roustio took over the event, it was nearly dead. Actually, it was flatlined with no pulse, having been given up as lost before then Decatur school superintendent Elmer McPherson asked the recently retired Roustio to assume control.
The results have been pretty astounding. The tournament, which divvies up $18,000 among the eight teams in the tourney, is in the black now allowing Roustio to funnel money into feeder programs as well as helping to upgrade facilities at the local schools.
Continuing to build
Success for the event may not ever reach the level of the 2007 tourney. Buoyed by Purdue-bound Lewis Jackson and Illinois-commit D.J. Richardson, last year’s bracket held at least six Division I recruits in its fold and the stands showed it. Nearly full every year since Roustio took over, fire marshals turned hundreds of fans away in 2007.
“That’s what this tournament is capable of,” said Kevin Breheny, who represented title sponsor Team Soy Capital. “One of the first events I attended when I moved here in 1978 was the Turkey Tourney and I had never seen anything like it. So when we heard that it might be folding, we wanted to get involved. We are incredibly glad we did. It’s a terrific event, a chance for Decatur to show off a little bit and it‘s all possible because of the work of Mel Roustio.”
Team Soy Capital, a combination of Soy Capital Bank and J.L. Hubbard Insurance and Bonds, isn’t the only sponsor. Roustio wrangled soy giant Archer Daniels Midland into the mix as well as Ameren IP, Caterpillar, McDonald’s, Archon Hospitality and Crown Toyota/Miles Chevrolet. Still, it would be a break-even prospect if not for the enormous crowds now filling the stands.
“There is a rich basketball tradition here in Decatur and then we try to bring in as good of talent as there is in the state to compete,” Roustio said. “There are always some extraordinary basketball players here.”
Tourney historian J. Thomas McNamara tallied 68 eventual Division I players in the 39 years plus straight-to-the-NBA’s Shaun Livingston. That number will go up by next year when at least four of the 2008 participants likely move on to major college programs.
No stopping
This year’s event, won by Bolingbrook over Springfield Southeast on a late shot by Division I recruit Troy Snyder, was another in a seven-year stretch of success.
Fans filled the seats as well as the common area where concessions were sold. There were any number of hugs as reunions were made by friends and family members in for the holiday. Smiles, laughs and well wishes rang though the halls at Stephen Decatur Middle School.
“That’s what I like best about being involved in this tournament,“ Roustio said. “It’s a chance for people to come to Decatur and realize that its not like what they’ve heard. This is a town full of hard-working, salt-of-the-earth people. It’s a nice town with some great people and this tournament has been a great part of the city for a long time. It’s nice to be a part of it.”
The rebuilding of the tournament has been no small undertaking, one seemingly larger than a guy who, seven years ago, was nearly Winnebago-ing around the Midwest to visit his 14 grandkids. But it’s become his passion.
“You know, I don’t do this for the hoorahs, or for the small stipend they pay me,” Roustio said. “I do it because it’s a competitive situation. I’ve always been competitive. That’s why I coached so long. This gives me the chance to try and make this the premier Thanksgiving event in the state.”
If it’s not the premier event, it’s got to be close according to Crown Toyota’s Darcy Grinestaff.
“This is an amazing event and that’s all thanks to Mel,” said Grinestaff, who played in the tournament in 1974 and had a son, Jordan, make the all-tourney team in 2006. “We’re just happy to be a part of it.”
Troy Hayes covers central and southern Illinois for maxpreps.com. He can be reached at sportsgopher@yahoo.com
