On Thursday, the Missouri Sports Hall of Fame inducted North Harrison grad Don Edwards into the Hall of Fame. He played basketball for North Harrison, where he scored over 1,000 career points during the 1970’s. He later was an assistant under Claude Samson at Northeast Nodaway.
Starting with the 1983-84 season, Edwards began his career coaching at Jefferson. He brought the same hell-bent style he had as a player onto his teams at Jefferson. In one of his first games as coach, he was coaching the boys at the Albany Armory at the Albany Tournament against the Warriors, who had a long year that year. They were trailing at halftime, and he yelled at his players so loudly that everyone could hear it from the gym. Someone asked his dad, Lyle Edwards, who that was. The Eagles came back and won the game and would go on to state that year.
Edwards went on to win multiple state championships in both basketball and softball, winning a state title with the boys in his final year.
Also inducted into the Hall of Fame were the Northeast Nodaway girls basketball teams from 1973-79 and 1982. They won six state titles during that span, including putting together a winning streak of 78 games. Coach Claude Samson, who was a graduate of Ravenwood High School, won over 1,200 games for the Bluejays over the years. His rule was that if the other team was a better team, they couldn’t do anything about it, but if they won because his team didn’t hustle, they could do something about it. On more than one occasion, he would bench his starters for not hustling and give his freshmen and sophomores a chance.
He was a professional boxer before he got into coaching. If any of the kids talked back during practice, he had a pair of boxing gloves handy, and they had a choice between shutting up and getting into the ring with him.
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