Church family members migrate to Cape, congregate on sidelines when Cape Central, Saxony Lutheran boys teams take basketball court

The story of how Mike and Phoebe Church came to call Cape Girardeau home starts with a blind date between a Truman State basketball player and a member of the school's dance team.

Well, that's the story of how Mike and Phoebe met in 1972. The story about how their family ended up in Southeast Missouri after 37 years of marriage, three children and a life built together in Illinois is a little more complicated.

Today, their daughter, Leslie, is a speech pathologist at Jackson. Drew, the older son, is in his sixth season as the boys basketball coach at Central, where Mike is an assistant. Dane, the younger son, is in his first season as the Saxony Lutheran boys basketball coach.

Drew's and Dane's basketball story starts at Eastern Illinois University in Charleston, Ill., where Mike was an assistant coach and teacher for 23 years and Phoebe was the chair of the kinesiology and sports studies department. Their sons started out as ball boys and eventually grew into playing against EIU players.

"I would just go to practice every day at Eastern and just sit and watch and shoot around on a side basket or something," Dane said. "I traveled a lot until I got to junior high. I went on road trips with Eastern -- almost all the OVC road trips and we went to Hawaii and Florida and Wyoming -- all over. I would miss school for four or five days at a time, but then once I got to junior high I started playing more organized basketball.

Saxony Lutheran coach Dane Church talks to his players during last week’s game against Central. Church is in his first season with the Crusaders after playing collegiately at SIU Edwardsville and serving as a graduate assistant at Southeast Missouri State. (Laura Simon)

"I was just around it, mostly just watched and listened."

Phoebe summed up the family business while sitting in the Central stands Tuesday night watching her sons coach against each other for the first time.

"Our lives are basketball," she said. "That's been our existence pretty well."

Older brother Drew and his favored Tigers easily won that night.

"It's interesting," Phoebe said at halftime. "I really kind of like for them to get it over with. I'm being very conscious of clapping for every point. But I'm feeling quite a bit of stress, and I'm just kind of hoping that it goes well.

"I'm not sure what well is."

Mike didn't enjoy the game any more from his courtside seat.

"Tonight was the worst," he said, "just because you have two boys and somebody's going to lose."

The two boys that grew up to be like dad, who spent 10 years as a high school basketball coach in Illinois before moving on to EIU.

"I think it was just kind of in the blood," Phoebe said. "It didn't surprise us that they both would end up being coaches. It was not surprising I would say, although Mike always kind of shakes his head and says ‘I don't know why they want to be coaches.'"

Drew has a theory.

"I think growing up that way it's just kind of in you," he said. "I think eventually you're around the game so much, it's just kind of what you want to do. And seeing your dad and other family members coach, it was kind of just destined to be."

If becoming a coach was destiny, then becoming one in Southeast Missouri was serendipity.

That story starts with Leslie, the oldest sibling, and her decision to attend Southeast Missouri State University.

"She came to school here and tried out for the dance team and made it," Mike said. "Everything just kind of, I guess, worked its way here."

A chance meeting

Drew, who played at Evansville for four years and spent a year as an assistant at Bethel University in Tennessee, visited Leslie in Cape Girardeau, where he had a chance run-in with Southeast's then men's basketball coach Gary Garner.

"It was weird," Drew said. "Honestly, I was playing one day in the Rec Center and he approached me and was just like, ‘Who are you?' Then we got to talking and I told him my background and what I was doing now and it just opened the opportunity for him to say, ‘Well, I've got a GA spot.'"

Drew served as a graduate assistant under Garner from 2002 to 2004. He then spent a year as the Jackson junior varsity coach before being hired by Central.

Mike and Phoebe followed their family to Missouri a year later.

"We moved here in 2007," Mike said. "We both retired from Eastern Illinois University and most people, like, go to Florida or Texas or something. We go to Cape Girardeau."

Both work part time at Southeast. Phoebe is a student teacher supervisor, while Mike teaches classes on coaching.

"When I took this job, he kind of just saw an opportunity to get away," Drew said. "He's always wanted to have a farm with horses and stuff like that, so now he was able to do that. He actually lives right next door to me.

"He's got two horses and some acreage. He got to retire and get down here and eventually see his grandkids and to kind of stay a part of basketball in some way because he loves teaching kids and coaching kids. And just to stay around the game, I think, because I don't pay him a whole lot."

The last line was delivered with the smallest of smiles since his dad volunteers his time and isn't paid.

"It's been an adjustment for both of them," Phoebe said about the arrangement. "But Drew's the head coach, and so Mike just follows what he says and then keeps quiet."

By the time Mike and Phoebe moved to Cape Girardeau, Dane was playing at SIU-Edwardsville, where he walked on before earning a scholarship for his junior and senior seasons.

He finished his playing career and college in 2010 and served as a graduate assistant at Southeast last season, thanks in part to Drew's and Mike's relationship with Southeast coach Dickey Nutt.

"The more I've been here, I got to know more people and he wanted to coach," Drew said. "Knowing coach Nutt when he first got here, I was kind of able to open up that opportunity for him."

Following another lead from his dad, Dane stopped by Saxony Lutheran one day to talk to athletic director and boys basketball coach Sam Sides.

"I kind of wanted to get into high school," Dane said. "That's what I wanted to do, and I talked to coach Sides this summer. He talked to my dad also and said in a year or two he might not do it much longer."

Sides told him that the school just had hired a JV coach and was set for the upcoming school season.

"I was still planning on being at SEMO," Dane said. "I was there all summer and then one day he called me and said that their girls coach resigned and he was moving over to the girls, and that if I wanted the boys job, it was mine."

Like Drew at Central, Dane took over a program in the middle of the summer. And like Drew, his first season has yielded more losses than wins.

"This experience for him has been great," Drew said. "Similar to me, his first job, he's kind of having to learn on the run a little bit, kind of like when I got here. I was overwhelmed. That's a good way of doing it, kind of going in and being a little scared. I'm not saying that he's scared, but being a little overwhelmed is not a bad thing. It teaches you to kind of take it a day at a time and really learn how to progress throughout the season."

Central finished with losing records in Drew's first three seasons but won its first district title with him on the sideline a year ago.

"I think it's great," Drew said. "I know this doesn't happen all the time, but I think it's great for a coach to go in and go through hard seasons like that, to really learn the downfalls and how hard it is to really win because it teaches you how hard you've got to work and you understand losing and then you appreciate, when you are successful, just how hard it was to get there."

Dane said he has asked his brother and father for advice on occasion, though not as often as he expected when he started.

"We mostly talk about just the way kids play or how you handle certain situations, whether it be practice or preparation or certain scenarios with players," Dane said. "Not so much X's and O's, just maybe how practice is going or certain things that happen in practice."

While Mike's support of the Saxony Lutheran team is less direct, he watches Dane's games on nights that Central doesn't play and offered each Crusaders player encouragement as they emerged from the locker room after Tuesday night's game.

"Good job. You guys hang in there," he said to one.

"You'll get there," was the message to another.

Not long after that, Mike headed back out to the gym, where most of his family still was sitting in the stands.

"It's not something we planned," Drew said about the family's reunion. "It just kind of worked out like that, but it's nice. You don't have to travel so much."

Spanning the gap

Drew was 9 years old when Dane was born, meaning he left for college when Dane was in the third grade.

"I was probably annoying to him growing up," Dane said. "I'm sure I was. I always wanted to tag along even when he was just hanging out with his friends."

The age gap and years spent living in different cities also meant Drew and Dane never played on the same basketball team.

"As big of an age difference as there is between Dane and I, we didn't really play a lot of basketball together," Drew said. "It was more a big brother being mean to little brother."

Still, the brothers' basketball education mostly has been the same. Both grew up in the EIU gym, both learned from their father and both coaches Dane played for at SIUE were assistants at Evansville while Dane was playing.

"Drew and I played basically in the same system," Dane said. "It's crazy because, like I said, I'm so much younger than him. We kind of got closer once I got into college and then especially when I got out of college.

"It's crazy. Almost all of the sets and offenses I ran in college, they were called the same thing when he played at Evansville. We run a lot of the same stuff. I've changed some of the names now, and I'm sure he has, too, so we call them different things."

There is a striking similarity between the two on the sideline. If they'd glanced down to the other bench Tuesday night, they would have seen a mirror image multiple times. They simultaneously adjusted their ties while squatting in identical positions at one point in the first quarter.

"I don't see it," Drew said. "Personally, you don't really see it, but my wife was saying and my mom was saying our mannerisms are alike and we sound alike."

Both wore blue shirts and blue ties, both put on a suit coat before the start of the varsity game after leaving it in the locker room for the junior varsity contest and both were unaware of the other's choice.

"That's just a coincidence," Drew said. "I wear a suit coat every game just because it's what I've always done, but I know as the game starts I'm going to lose it. I always hand it to my trainer as soon as the starting lineups are over."

Standing on the same sideline is the closest the two have come to a one-on-one matchup in years.

"We were always so far apart and I'd always told him, you'll never beat me one-on-one," Drew said. "Ever."

Dane conceded that he's never beaten his big brother.

"We probably haven't played since I was maybe in high school, so I'm open to the challenge right now," Dane said. "I'm open to a game any time. He's only getting older, and I'm not 25 yet. I'm open to a game for however long."

So is a rematch on the way?

"No," Drew said. "He'd probably kill me now. I don't play as much anymore and he's still young. I'm sure he's in better shape than I am."