At North Platte, Ryan Davis Still Molding Girls Teams Into Winners

After leading Northeast Nodaway’s girls to heights not seen since the Claude Samson days in 2010 and 2011, Ryan Davis left to bigger and better things.

During his tenure, Northeast Nodaway was one of the top teams in the area, forcing 30+ turnovers a game even against good teams. They beat teams like Jefferson, Cameron, Rock Port, Tarkio, South Nodaway, DeKalb, and Stanberry. Jacqueline Schulte scored 1,488 career points and her class was the first to play in the new NEN gym all four years; Michelle Schulte and Blair Schmitz also broke the 1,000 point barrier.

Many people have different rituals during winning streams, and ours is to fret and worry about anything going wrong or anyone getting hurt. We would always ask Ryan before games if everyone was healthy, and finally, he said, “It’s a wonderful day in the neighborhood.”

He moved on to Lexington, where he was the head girls coach for two years. In his second year, he brought his team back to Northwest Missouri to face the Bluejays. Neither team had won a game up to that point. At one point, he forgot himself and told the NEN girls to start warming up, which they did. The game was an epic battle between the Bluejays and Lexington, decided, appropriately enough, in sudden death overtime when Michelle Schulte hit a free throw to beat Lexington. It was the only time Vance Proffitt, now the NEN Athletic Director, had beaten Ryan Davis when the two coached against each other.

Davis moved on to Savannah, and then to North Platte, where he rose up the ranks until he became the head girls basketball coach there. Over the years, NEN and North Platte have put up some pretty spirited battles in basketball even though the Bluejays would always come up short. The current players still remember Mr. Rogers on the sidelines at NEN, telling his teams to know their situations, his quips, and his epic groans when they were not playing defense up to his standards.

Last year, North Platte struggled to reach .500 all year, but showed they were capable of beating anyone on a given night; they beat North Andrew during the course of the campaign. Finally, they caught fire at the end of the year and won all three games handily in districts, getting a winning season and winning 15 games before falling to powerhouse Mid-Buchanan in districts.

This summer, they are trying to build on what they accomplished last year. Playing against a team from Omaha that was much bigger and quicker Thursday, they fell behind 26-6 before they realized they could play basketball with them and chipped away, making things interesting before losing 40-33. Davis’ steady hand helped his team keep their composure and get back in the game. “This is a fun group of girls to coach,” he said.