Mike Kays: Grateful to receive induction into the Muskogee Athletics Hall of Fame

Longtime newspaper employee, now with SBLive Oklahoma, developed relationships with athletes, coaches in the area

MUSKOGEE, OKLAHOMA - People like us at SBLive, we just love to write. 

Most of us at one time or another have been lucky enough to make it a living. 

My run started as a college-age stringer in the Dallas-Fort Worth area 40 years ago where high school games filled 4-5 pages in the Saturday morning editions. That era is bygone. The print industry has changed, and especially so in the last 15 of the 22 years, I somehow stayed in one place in Muskogee.

Workforce shrinkage due at times to short-sighted decisions at a corporate level have had their impact all over.

My Muskogee ride ended in March when I "retired" from the business and into a new totally different venture, all while keeping a hand in the freelance world in places like SBLive.

It's different for me now.

For starters, there's no total immersion in area athletes and coaches over 20-some-odd schools in five counties, with hours on the job stretching from morning coffee to bedtime. Those full-time days are gone.

Mike Kays' Muskogee Athletics Hall of Fame plaque 

As exhausting at times as that grind was, it was the relationships and their stories that fueled me. The telling of those stories in such a quality that they would be treasured clips for years, to me, always mattered.

The compliments on those were sufficient feedback. Of course it also paid the bills, but it never really seemed like a job in that regard.

While I dabbled in the college game - OU and OSU home games for several years and a half-dozen working vacations at bowl games including two national championships - that kind of glamour detail, however cool, never struck at the heart of why I liked this work.

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And while the trickle-down effect of NIL has now reached the high school level, that level remains one of the last levels of sport in its purest form. Most kids are playing for the love of a game which will come to what is typically an emotional end on a high school stage their senior years.

But last week, I found myself at a banquet table flanking six who did not see things end that way.

As a group, we were all part of the 2023 Muskogee Athletics Hall of Fame.

The 2023 Muskogee Athletics Hall of Fame induction class, featuring Mike Kays (right)

You might recognize some of this class:

Jameel Owens was one of the top recruits in 2008 and was part of one of the Sooner squads that reached the national championship game. Kelsey McClure followed a successful basketball career at Muskogee with stints for a couple of European teams, among others stateside. Coco Epps played college softball after being all-state in both softball and basketball in high school.

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Siblings Jordan and Evan Sallis were known base thieves all the way into college. Jordan did his thing at Arkansas-Fort Smith, from where he was a 2009 draft pick of the Boston Red Sox and the first African-American at Muskogee to be selected. Evan, meanwhile, did her thing at Oklahoma where she led the team in steals for two years before finishing her college time at Southeast Missouri.

But a more widely known member of the group is Oklahoma high school coaching legend Ron Lancaster, who won state titles at Enid and Jenks before turning around programs at Sallisaw and then at Muskogee, where he helped the Roughers to the state semifinals for the first time in two decades.

Mike Kays, left, with former Muskogee football coach Ron Lancaster, who also won state titles as coach at Enid and Jenks

All of those represent a memory for me over the years I've been here. There were of course others, many Muskogee exes and those from schools all over my coverage area who have achieved various levels of greatness in the NFL, MLB, WNBA and other pro hoops leagues.

My diploma came not from Muskogee nor any of those other schools. But on this night, I for the historical record became an adopted Rougher, inducted into a family by a mark of appreciation that I am truly overwhelmed by.

Quite frankly, as I look back, all these schools adopted me knowingly or otherwise, as I celebrated their most joyous of memories and tried to give a healthy perspective to the lowest of their heartbreaks.

And I'm grateful for having had the chance. 

-- Mike Kays | @SBLiveOK