Shumate excited to see former team

~ Southeast's winningest coach plans to attend the hall of fame ceremonies.

Ron Shumate won more games than any men's basketball coach in Southeast Missouri State history.

Had Shumate not built a slumping Division II program into one of the nation's finest, it's doubtful that the Southeast administration would have considered a move up to Division I.

And some people believe that had Shumate not developed Southeast basketball into such a hot ticket, the Show Me Center would not have been constructed, at least not when it was.

Yet Shumate hasn't stepped foot in the impressive 20-year old facility since 1997, and he only has been back to Cape Girardeau once during that time.

That is about to change.

Shumate will be in town later this week as his 1985-86 Southeast team is inducted into the university's Athletic Hall of Fame.

The induction ceremony will be Friday night at the Show Me Center, with a reception at 6 p.m., a dinner at 7 p.m. and the ceremony at 7:45 p.m.

Saturday night, the squad that finished second in the nation -- along with four individual inductees -- will be introduced at halftime of Southeast's basketball game against Tennessee Tech.

"We're excited, Peggy [his wife] and I," said Shumate, who is retired and living in Chattanooga, Tenn. "I've talked to several of the kids and the [assistant] coaches. ... Everybody is going to try and get there."

Of his first visit to the Show Me Center in more than 10 years, Shumate said: "It'll be good, 'cause we worked awfully hard to get the thing built. With the help of everybody in the community, the administration we had, we built a wonderful facility, not only for basketball, but for the community, the university.

"All the players who played there previously, who didn't get to play in the Show Me Center, they were part of it, they left a legacy."

When Shumate was hired by Southeast in 1981, the then-Indians had compiled nine losing records in the previous 14 seasons. Crowds at venerable Houck Field House, which seated 2,500, were sparse during many of those years.

"It wasn't very hard to get a ticket at that time," said Frank Chong, a former Southeast professor who was at the university for 35 years before retiring in 2003.

But Chong, who was on the coaching search committee and later would become a close friend and confidant of Shumate's, had a feeling things were about to change after the new coach took over.

"I told everybody that if they didn't get their tickets soon, they wouldn't be able to get tickets," recalled Chong, who proved to be right on the money with his belief in Shumate.

The Indians finished last in the Missouri Intercollegiate Athletic Association the year before Shumate arrived in Cape Girardeau.

It didn't take long for Shumate, who had previously built a struggling Tennessee-Chattanooga program into a Division II power, to get the Indians rolling and Houck rocking.

Shumate's first Southeast squad, in 1981-82, went from worst to first, winning the program's first MIAA title in 18 years and advancing to the Division II quarterfinals.

That was the beginning of a glorious final 10 years in Division II for Southeast men's basketball -- spanning Houck Field House and the Show Me Center -- as Shumate led the Indians to nine seasons of at least 20 wins, eight national tournament appearances and two runner-up finishes.

Shumate said he was undaunted by the shape Southeast's program was in when he took over.

"I've never taken a job that was in a good situation. I wouldn't know what to do with a program that had the stables full," Shumate said. "That was sort of my calling, I guess, to rejuvenate programs.

"The main thing is to go out and get players who can play. Great players make great coaches. I've never seen a mule win the Kentucky Derby."

Added Shumate: "We were fortunate. We worked hard. ... We spent a lot of time on the road talking to parents, convincing them Southeast was the place for their kids to go to play basketball and get an education. Once you start winning, it gets easier."

The Show Me Center opened in 1987, and some believe part of the reason university and community officials even began discussing such a building was because not enough Southeast basketball fans could watch the Indians play, since cozy Houck Field House was sold out virtually every night.

Shumate's first team that played in the Show Me Center went 28-4, a school record for wins that still stands.

Southeast advanced to the Division II championship game for a second time in 1988-89, but again fell short of the title.

Shumate's next two squads combined to go 47-12 as the Indians continued to average well over 5,000 fans in the 7,000-seat Show Me Center.

Then the university's athletic teams made the daunting move to Division I, which began a rough stretch for Shumate. He was hampered under an NCAA rule for new Division I basketball programs that prohibited them from competing in their conference tournaments for five years, which severely restricted recruiting.

Southeast's second Division I team under Shumate went 16-11, but that was his only winning record with the Indians on the Division I level.

Shumate's final season at Southeast, in 1996-97, produced a 12-18 mark.

In May of 1997, Shumate and his staff were terminated by the university during an NCAA investigation of the men's basketball program that eventually uncovered several violations and resulted in Southeast being placed on three years probation.

At the time, Shumate -- who never admitted to any NCAA violations -- felt he was treated unfairly by Southeast.

But Shumate said during this week's telephone conversation that he long ago gave up any hard feelings he might have had against the university.

"You've got to put things behind you and move forward. You can't live in the past. That's the way I try to approach it," said the 68-year-old Shumate, whose Southeast record is 306-171 in 16 seasons. "Needless to say, it was a tough situation for everybody, but you have to put that behind you and go forward."

Shumate's visit to Cape Girardeau this week will be a time for celebration, not bitterness.

The team that will be honored started slowly, but caught fire and compiled a school-record 18-game winning streak before losing to Sacred Heart 93-87 in the national title game to finish 27-7.

"Once we got going, we seemed to get better and better as the year went by," Shumate said. "We won 18 in a row with that group. ... That's a good sign of kids who want to improve, want to get better each day. They wanted to get better."

Ronny Rankin, a sweet-shooting swingman who was one of Southeast's two signature players that season -- along with powerful center Riley Ellis -- went down with cramps with about nine minutes left in the tight title game.

Without Rankin, who had scored 35 points in the national semifinal, Sacred Heart took control despite 35 points from Ellis. Rankin finished with 21.

"He [Rankin] was one of our go-to guys. It's hard to lose your go-to guy and still be successful," Shumate said. "When we lost him to cramps, I knew we were in trouble."

Rankin, Ellis and most of the other players from that squad are expected to attend the induction ceremony, along with assistant coaches Sam Weaver (head coach at Division II Henderson State) and Alan Barnett (head coach and athletic director at Dyersburg State Community College).

"It's been a while since I've seen some of them," Shumate said. "We've talked occasionally, but it will be good to see them in person."

Shumate, a standout athlete at Tennessee Tech -- he starred in basketball and baseball, including leading the nation with a .527 batting average one year -- never coached again in college after leaving Southeast.

He worked a variety of jobs for a while, and most recently coached high school basketball for three years in Chattanooga, where he turned around a struggling program.

"They were in a dire situation. They hadn't done very well, and I knew some of the people there from when I was at Tennessee-Chattanooga," Shumate said. "We won 58 games in three years, kind of turned it around, got the program on the positive side."

Now Shumate and his wife are content in retirement, traveling quite a bit.

"I've had opportunities to go back into college coaching, but at my age, it's time for me to sit back and let the young guys do it," Shumate said. "We do a lot of traveling, trying to stay out of the cold weather, seeing the grandchildren, things I could never do when I was coaching."

Shumate may be far removed from his Southeast days, but he said he still relishes the good times he enjoyed in Cape Girardeau.

"It was a great part of my life, a defining part of my life," he said. "It's something I'll never forget."

Other honorees

Individual inductees in Southeast's sixth Hall of Fame class will be Lisa Foster (softball and basketball, 1987 to 1989), Jackson native Mike Gohn (football, 1978 to 1981), Ed Kiehne (basketball, 1920 to 1923) and Ed White (track and cross country, 1972 to 1975).

Tickets for the induction ceremony are available to the public at a cost of $20. They can be purchased at the ticket office in Houck Field House. For information, call 651-2113.