Tonight, I'm heading down to my high school Alma mater, Jefferson City High School, to watch the Jays football team compete in the district playoffs. It should be a fun game as Columbia Rock Bridge comes to town and the two teams are hooking up for the 2nd time this season. When someone thinks of Jeff City football, arguably the most successful high school program in the long history of the state, one immediately thinks of legendary coach, Pete Adkins.
Coach Adkins is among the most successful high school coaches, not just in Missouri's history, but in the nation's history. He made the Jays an absolute juggernaut on the high school football stage for an incredible, dominating, thirty-seven seasons. Earlier this year, Adkins was named a Missouri Sports Legend by the Missouri Sports Hall of Fame, of which Adkins has been a member for twenty-seven years. The other figures who hold that distinction? Former Mizzou hoops coach Norm Stewart, the greatest Cardinal and Royal of them all in Stan Musial and George Brett, and former Super Bowl winning quarterback for the Kansas City Chiefs, Len Dawson. That's some pretty outstanding company.
Adkins won nine state championships and 354 games at the helm of the Jays (overall 354-48-2!), and at one point won an incredible 71 consecutive football games from 1959-1965. In his first 79 games at JC, Adkins complied a 76-1-2 overall record, which is just absolutely ridiculous. He had twenty unbeaten seasons. When Adkins stepped down as the head coach of the Jays following the '94-'95 school year, he stood tied for 2nd nationally in high school head coaching wins. Between Centralia, his first job, and the Jays, his record was 405-60-4, good for an .868 winning percentage. Again, ridiculous. It's because of Coach Adkins that Jefferson City Jays football became the standard bearer for high school football in Missouri, and why, even still today, many outlets consider the program to be the best in the state's history. Around the same time JC reached the 600-win club, which at the time was a select group of high school programs, and the first to reach it in Missouri, pop star Melissa Etheridge featured Adkins in one of her music videos. So that was pretty neat.
Coach Adkins will probably be in attendance tonight, as even though he's in his upper eighties, he still makes it out to most home games. Heck, I even saw him at Faurot Field prior to the Mizzou-Florida tilt a couple weeks ago. He was and is the embodiment of the phrase, "Jay Pride". He set a standard that was probably impossible for future coaches to live up to, and in the years since Adkins left, the Jays have only claimed one state title. Part of this regression is due to other programs catching up to Jeff City. But, I think also it goes to show just how great of a coach Pete Adkins was. The stadium in Jeff bears his name, and has for a long while now. I didn't play for Coach Adkins, or even play football in high school. Adkins had been retired for a while by the time I was a freshmen, but it's impossible to live in and go to school in Jefferson City and not feel and realize the impact he had. Even still today, Pete Adkins is the heart and soul of Jeff City football.
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