team to NOT win the state crown.
And there’s this:
• In 1992, Public School Stadium’s name was changed to Adkins Stadium.
•
Pete never has, and never will, say which team was his best or which players were his best. What about his most memorable coaches who are stung more by tough defeats than they are uplifted “I had to say that game that stopped our 71-game winning streak was one,” he said, “even though we knew it would happen one day. And then that four-overtime loss we had up there at Rockhurst (34- Rockhurst for the game-winning touchdown). “Of course, we had a lot of great wins, too, like all those state championship games.”
“It was just a good team effort — they all had as much pride in the program as I did and they worked as hard as they could. We won some years when we probably shouldn’t have, and we lost some years that we should have won. But year in and year out, we knew the next year we were probably going to be loaded.”
“We really stayed awfully basic over the years,” Adkins said. “We when I played at Culver-Stockton (in the late 1940s).” state championship game also nudged Pete even closer to retirement. “It probably had something to do with me retiring,” he said. “I thought if you’re going to go out, you want to go out on top. You nev- er have to second-guess yourself. You won it all, you won another state championship, it’s time to move on. That’s what I did. “That was a great team. We had a lot of great teams.” And those great teams produced some great numbers and mem-
his winning percentage remains second-best in the nation for high school coaches with 100 or more games. Here are just a few more of Pete’s accolades and achievements: • In 2013, he was elevated to the Missouri Legends Hall of Fame, an elite club that includes the likes of Stan Musial, Len Dawson, souri Hall of Fame.
10 /// November 2024
What’s The Secret of living to 100? “You just keep going through your routine every day, and hope the Does he watch his diet? Absolutely. He goes to a restaurant, or- ders what he wants, and then watches it go in his mouth and down into his belly.
“I pretty well eat what I want to eat,” he said. “I probably put a good steak once in a while, and every Tuesday night we go down to For those of you taking notes, remember that beer and tacos are two of the secrets to living to 100.
in. He wore out that pacemaker and has since gotten a new one. (Pete and I both recall the month of the surgery, April, but neither
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