By Mike Phillips
Contributing sportswriter
Congratulations Coach Farrington.
The long-time Cole Camp basketball coach was honored at Cole Camp Saturday night when the new basketball gym was named in his honor. His name was painted in blue on the gym floor.
Farrington called me a week ago today (Sunday) and told me about the ceremony. He told me there were former players coming back for the dedication from every state in the union.
Now, that is respect and loyalty for a man who has given up so much of his life to teach young men the greatest game ever invented. Farrington, a member of the Missouri High School Basketball Coaches Association Hall of Fame, coached basketball for 32 years at Cole Camp.
While talking to Farrington last week, I discovered he also coached baseball, volleyball and track at the Benton County High School.
Prior to coaching at Cole Camp, he was the head basketball coach at Russellville in 1965-66 and 1966-67 before landing the job at Cole Camp.
I have two special memories of Farrington from my writing days.
The first came during a game at Sacred Heart in the early 80s when I was working for the daily paper. Farrington picked up two technical fouls early in the game and was ejected. After the game, Farrington asked me to sit down with him and write down some quotes about the official who had given him the two technicals. I took his words down word for word and they were printed in the paper the next day.
And as they say, “the fight was on.”
Then several years later, Randy and I were down at Lincoln covering one of the Bluebird games in the Kaysinger Conference Tournament. Farrington wanted to do his post-game interview down in the hospitality room
The interview started about 9:30 and Farrington finally stopped talking at 2 a.m. the next day.
I could talk about the C-Clun Banquet the night Farrington retied, but the jokes told on Farrington had such colorful language, I can’t print any of them here.
Farrington even invited Randy and I down to his house for a get-together one night a few years ago. He could really tell a story.
The reason I am bringing him up is to let him know how much I respect him as a man and a coach.
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I attended the first 12 games of the W-K Holiday Shootout last weekend at State Fair Community College.
I love that event, because it is continuous basketball from early in the morning until late at night. There were four games Friday and eight Saturday. The Cole Camp girls and boys played Crest Ridge Monday night.
Before the Shootout ends, there will be 28 games involving 56 teams. Both the Smith-Cotton girls and boys won as did the Sacred Heart Gremlin boys Saturday.
I get to see a lot of teams I normally wouldn’t get to see play. I wish Green Ridge would get in it. They are the only Kaysinger team not in the Shootout. That is a shame.
I love the way Director Darren Pannier keeps the games moving. Usually teams get five minutes to warm up. They don’t need more time than that.
Games were running from 1:15 to 1:30 in length. I saw one game in the Northwest Tornamet last week that took just ner three hours to play. That’s ridiculous.
