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Having lived in southwestern Illinois near St. Louis for 34 years, I am a St. Louis Cardinals baseball fan and a huge follower of college and high school basketball. In fact, I was the founder and, for a quarter-century, the executive director of the nation's premier single-day high school basketball event -- the St. Louis Shootout. Over the years, high school teams from 29 states, including 72 state champions (one even from Huntsville, Ala.) participated in the December event, which featured 94 future NBA draft picks and 16 eventual NBA All-Stars.
A journalism major at Kansas State University, I spent nearly 30 years working in corporate communications for major St. Louis companies or serving as a marketing/communications consultant. My wife is a high school English teacher, and we have two sons. One works in marketing for the Walt Disney World Vacation Club in Orlando, Fla.; the other is in medical product sales in the St. Louis area.