By Bob Kelley, Retired RLC Director of Marketing and Public Information
INA, IL (Apr. 24, 2023) – A prized catch who had helped his prep team to an undefeated state championship, a third-in-the-state finish and a three-year mark of 90-10 was thrown to the wolves the following season.
The 6-foot-4, 180-pounder vividly recalls that introduction to college basketball as a starting center. “I got the (tar) beat out of me all the time that season,” says Stacy Sturm, who can chuckle about it now. He survived and he thrived.
And he loves the guy who put him in that situation. “I think the world of him,” Sturm says in reference to his Warrior mentor, Mitch Haskins, on the brink of his induction into the Rend Lake College Sports Hall of Fame. “A super coach. A super friend. It is unbelievable how much I think of him.”
“I never had a player before or since that could do some of the things on the floor Stacy Sturm could do,” remembers Haskins. “He was dedicated to being the very best student-athlete he could be. I know he was a very good student, too.
“He was a leader on the floor by example – not vocally – but his work ethic was as good as any player we ever had. He would come early to practice to work on things with his ‘twin,’ Eric Johnson, and they would stay late after everyone else was gone. Stacy was extremely dedicated athletically as well as academically.”
Sturm, who asked for his coach to be his presenter, will be recognized along with Second-Team All-America Golfer JR Conkle and the 1996-97 Lady Warrior Basketball Team that was Great Rivers Athletic Conference Co-Champions during 22nd HOF Ceremonies at 5:30 p.m. Saturday, April 29, in the RLC Event Center on the Ina campus.
Reservations to join the honorees for the catered event at a cost of $25 per person may be made by contacting the Athletic Department at (618) 437-5677, Ext. 1250, or by email to oxford@rlc.edu or wills@rlc.edu. The deadline to apply is April 20.
Sturm was two seasons removed from helping the 35-0 McLeansboro Foxes capture the Illinois High School Association Class A State Championship when he brought his proven winning ways on the hardwood to the Ina campus. A season-ending injury five games into Year Two extended his RLC career from 1985-86 through 1987-88.
As a sophomore Sturm was All-Region XXIV First Team, All-Great Rivers Athletic Conference, All-Region Tournament and NJCAA All-America Honorable Mention after averaging 16.0 points per game and team-highs of 9.7 rebounds and 4.8 assists.
That team finished 23-12 and was Region XXIV runner-up, the best showing in school history to that point. Conqueror Belleville Area advanced directly to the NJCAA National Tournament and finished fourth, with RLC settling for the second-most wins in Warrior annals to date.
His career total of 906 points in 69 games played ranked No. 7 at the time, and his single-season total of 497 in Year Three was 10th best among all Warriors. He was the leading rebounder and third-highest scorer his junior season for Hardin-Simmons University (TX) but finished his collegiate career at Lambuth College (TN), where he was reunited with Johnson.
When first-year contributor Sturm scored in double-figures, the Warriors were 12-3. He was named RLC “Freshman of the Year” playing alongside brother Tracy and HOFer-to-be Michael Ayers. In Year Two, the Warriors were 4-1 until their leading rebounder and two-time 22-point scorer broke his arm in practice – teammate Chad Rushing was already lost due to a broken collarbone – and finished 14-18 overall.
As a redshirt sophomore, who had to sit out the first four games, he was the leading scorer in 15 games, with 20 or more eight times, led in rebounds in 24 games and in assists in 18 games. Highs – 25 points vs. Olney Central twice, 18 boards vs. Paducah and 11 assists vs. three foes. For good measure, he was 6-of-11 from 3-point range.
Sturm may have been most dangerous from the free throw line and how he got there as often as he did.
“We ran a high 1-4 offense that season,” Haskins explained. “With Johnson and him almost like twins in the post position, it worked out really, really well for us. They were adept at releasing at just the right time, turning and rolling to the blocks on either side of the free throw circle.
“Stacy had a lot of special skills offensively for a big man. He was especially good when he would get the ball down low and then faking a shot with his head and shoulders; he might do that two or three times on the defender. When he got the defender to leap, he got a lot of his points on free throws and 3-point plays.”
“I’d say I developed that ball-fake move early on playing against an older brother who was always much more athletic than I was,” the player admitted. “I think that required me to be more creative with my moves and fakes. I may have stole some of those moves, too, from (teammate) Armone Matthews.”
Sturm was an 80 percent marksman from the line as a freshman (88-110) and finished his career from the stripe at .756. He made a total of 248 free throws in 69 games, compared to 326 field goals.
Rend Lake College brings back a plethora of memories for a player who claims, as a freshman starter, “I definitely was the weak link on that team.” Other Warriors surrounding him were the veteran Cairo duo of Ayers and Matthews, sophomore Sheldon Clay, a transfer from John A. Logan, and former McLeansboro teammate Darin Lee (RLC Sports Hall of Fame as an Alumni Coach, Class of 2019). Other contributors included brother Tracy, who played the sixth-most minutes, and two other former Foxes, Jeff Morris and Bryan Cross.
“In the Danville Area Tournament my freshman year,” Sturm laughed at the thought, ”Haskins called a timeout and made the other players stay on the floor. I don’t recall ever seeing that done before or after, but he called the timeout just for me. He absolutely knew what he was doing.”
On the strength of his 24 points in the first game, and with thanks to the Coach for his “encouraging” timeout message in the second contest,” Sturm was named the tournament’s “Most Valuable Player.”
In a game against Wabash Valley his sophomore season, “We were on quite a roll as a team, but I had stunk it up the first half. At halftime, he kept me in the locker room a long time after the rest of the team went back out to get ready for the second half.”
The Warriors would go on to win the game in overtime on the road, 82-78, with Sturm registering a triple-double, including steals. “I don’t remember what he said, but it must have worked,” the player noted.
The Sturms may have been the only kids anywhere who grew up with their own gym. Father Tom, who played for the McLeansboro team which finished fourth in the one-class state tourney in 1962, and Mother Carolyn purchased a former elementary school and converted it into their home, with a built-in gymnasium for their sons and friends. Consider that unique purchase a huge success.
Despite the prep successes, “I developed late enough, I would never have had a chance to play if I had gone to a bigger school. I owe an awful lot to Coach Haskins,” Sturm said.
“After playing for Coach Lee (David, Darin’s father), I felt I was ready for anything. I think some of my teammates were scared of Haskins, but his coaching style was nothing for me. I was used to it. It was exactly what I needed.”
Hooking up with a former prep rival, Johnson (Norris City-Omaha-Enfield H.S.), was another perfect fit. “I absolutely think the world of our friendship. We were really close back then, even though he was a year younger. We had such a great relationship we ended up as roommates when we both finished our careers at Lambuth.”
Other teammates that came to mind were friends like Steve Lacy (Marion); Todd Smith (Dayton, OH) – “the best finisher I ever saw”; Rushing; Rob Gaddey (Carmi); Tommy Hayes (Mt. Vernon), and Hardy Crawford (Wyatt, MO).
Another memory, he commented, “was how during tournaments we were in and watching the other teams play before us, I was usually in awe of how good they were . . . and then we would go out and somehow beat them the next game.”
The ’87-88 Warriors tied for second with Belleville Area in the GRAC at 9-5, a game behind Wabash Valley, and put together two eight-game winning streaks. The last of those carried them to the Regional finals.
“I believe it was Assistant Coach (Craig) Partridge who introduced us to a match-up zone defense. As it turned out, we were able to master it and were devastating when we used it,” Sturm said. RLC employed it to snap a two-game skid by beating Moberly (MO), 100-80, and Kaskaskia, 96-73.
“We just got rolling after that. Oh, my gosh, I had so much fun. That was the most fun I ever had playing organized basketball.” Region XXIV Tournament victories capped the last of those winning streaks – 95-78 vs. Lincoln Trail, 85-80 over Southeastern Illinois and 99-82 over Kaskaskia – before BAC played the spoiler.
Just saying, perhaps a humble Hall-of-Fame inductee, Stacy Sturm, had a little something to do with that. When the versatile redhead scored in double-digits in 15 games as a freshman and on the floor portions of the next two years, Haskins & His Warriors were 38-13, missing a trip to the NJCAA Finals by one final win.
Sturm knew his wife of 26 years, Amy, from their days as students at Lambuth, located in Jackson, TN, but never hung out together then. Fate would bring them back in touch in Oak Ridge, TN, where Stacy was working at his first job and playing in a Recreational League, and Amy was working the counter at the facility where the teams played.
Today, they are the proud parents of two college students. Luke, 23, was on a full-ride academic scholarship at the University of Oklahoma, where he graduated with a triple-major in Physics, Math and History, and today he is a University of Wisconsin Ph.D. candidate specializing in Byzantine History, a study of the Eastern Roman Empire. Hayden, 20, is majoring in Mechanical Engineering at Austin Peay State University (TN).
The Sturms live in Clarksville, TN, with Chemist Stacy hooking up with Nashville-based U.S. Smokeless Tobacco, a wholly owned Altria Company today, in 1998. He has served as Senior Manager of Quality Processes for 10 years, overseeing the critical fermentation of the product.
The Lady Warriors of Coach Ronnie Ressel earned a share of the GRAC title for the only time in school history and did so in the most dramatic fashion possible. A double-overtime, 78-75 triumph at home in the next-to-last game of the regular season over perennial frontrunner John A. Logan – also a first victory for the program – left the rivals with 11-3 league records and a share of the title.
Ressel & Friends would finish 22-9 overall and set new team standards with both the defense, holding opponents to just 59.7 points per outing, and offensively, with a total of 639 assists (20.6 average).
Golfer JR Conkle, an all-around athlete from Rosiclare (Hardin County High School), who capped his Warrior career on the links with Second-Team All-America status for a well-balanced squad that won nine of 12 tournaments before settling for a third-place showing in the Spring 1996 NJCAA Division II Finals in Southern Pines, NC.
Conkle was medalist by two strokes as a freshman in the Fall ’93 Lincoln Invitational, which attracted 16 teams, but was encouraged by an acquaintance back home to attend mortuary school the following year. That career decision, literally, proved short-lived, and he returned to RLC for the 1995-96 campaign. He may have missed being part of the ’95 RLC Hall of Fame gang that finished runner-up at Nationals, but he eventually moved on to a career at Murray (KY) State, where he finished second in the Ohio Valley Conference Tournament in his collegiate swan song.