PSYCHOLOGY THE KEY TO WINS, SAYS HOLDER OF 12 STATE TITLES

MORLEY, Mo. -- Ron Cookson takes a long drag off his Vantage and gestures to the trophies and game balls and team pictures that crowd shelves in his basement, a humble shrine to an amazing career.

He knows the boys in the pictures -- framed photos snapped at state tournaments in the moments before they tested their mettle on the hardwood floor. In his gravelly, southern drawl, he reels off names of kids he screamed at and prayed with and willed into greatness over his 25-year coaching career at Scott County Central High School.

Otto Porter, he says. Marcus Timmons. Matt Cline.

Retired now with 12 state basketball titles -- seven of them consecutive from 1985-91 -- Cookson, 56, knows for certain that his intimacy with those teams is what made the difference. It wasn't the strategy or the halftime pep talks or the equipment.

It was the understanding.

"There's a psychology part of getting the kids to perform, work and have pride in themselves," he said. "You have to get inside kids' heads for them to be dedicated.

"You can look at a kid and tell he's having a problem. I wanted to be in on it and help the kid out. You have to be there to guide them."

Being there meant Cookson's life revolved around a musty, cramped gym in the rural school of about 200 students. He kept track of his players outside of school and between classes. They were like sons -- like his two real sons, Brad and Jay, who played for him along the way.

And that closeness, he said, made everything else fall into place. Because of it, he knew where to put players. He knew what to tell them during games, what buttons to push to make them perform at their peak.

It made those teams believe in him enough to attend some of the longest practices in the state -- at least 2:30-7 p.m. through the week, except for game nights, and Sunday "after church," Cookson said.

They got Saturdays off.

Love of the game

Cookson learned to love basketball growing up in Puxico, Mo. He graduated Puxico High School in 1962 and went on to Southern Baptist Junior College in Walnut Ridge, Ark.

"I loved the game. I played. But I was not a good player," he said.

He graduated the College of the Ozarks in Clarksville, Ark., in 1966, spent four years coaching seventh- and eighth-grade boys basketball at Advance High School and became head coach at Scott County Central in 1970.

When he took over, the team had been winning only a handful of games a year.

But then the state championships started coming. First in 1976. Then in 1979. Another in 1980. And they kept coming.

Jeff Limbaugh, 39, was on the 1980 championship team. He is 6 feet, 1 inch tall -- not impressive for a basketball player -- but remembers triumphing over giants.

"You believed everything he told you," Limbaugh said. "You never second-guessed him. You knew that if you did it his way, you'd win the game. He got 110 percent out of players because he knew how to find our best abilities."

Cookson won his last state title in 1993 and retired from education in 1995, serving his final year as a teacher and assistant basketball coach.

Thirty-six of his former players went on to play college basketball. He went on to work for Limbaugh at his Scott County agriculture business, Heartland Applications.

Still inspiring

After days spent working among crops, he continues to inspire a protg, David Heeb, Bell City High School's boys basketball coach. Heeb, 22, played under Cookson through his junior year, graduated in 1996 and received his physical education degree from Southeast Missouri State University last year.

In his first season at Bell City, he's taken the team from a 10-15 record to 11-8 as of Thursday.

He visits Cookson sometimes after practice, and they drink glass after glass of iced tea and talk about the philosophy of boys basketball.

"Ninety percent of what I do as a coach and how I am as a person is because of him," Heeb said. "People have the perception that he screamed at us a lot. When the game wasn't going on and the gym wasn't full of people, it was nothing like that.

"He cared enough about us to tell us the truth."

It's tough to imagine the relaxed Cookson of today was infamous for telling sportswriters, after his team had badly beaten a lesser squad, that his boys were "good at beating up on cripples." Sometimes even a 40-point win wasn't enough if his players' hearts weren't in the game, and they heard about afterward.

"Those kids knew it was just a job," Cookson said. "They knew it was nothing personal. When something happened, I did it, and it was over with. I didn't harp on that kid over what he did last night."

He watched one of Heeb's games this year, but he generally stays away from high school gyms. Cookson has had two predecessors at Scott County Central, neither of them successful at leading their teams beyond the district tournament. Cookson serves on the local school board and is up for re-election in April.

Sometimes he sits in the basement shrine, a small, wood-paneled room that he and his wife, Dee, say they'll fix up someday. For now, it's enough to sit at the table and leaf through old yearbooks, touch old ribbons and look at those photos of serious boys.

But sometimes he sits outside and wistfully watches the Scott County Central buses roll past his Morley home on game nights.

"I miss dealing with the kids. I really miss that a whole lot," he said. "But I don't miss the pressure.

"I tried to be perfect."

RON COOKSON

* Age: 56

* Education: Graduated 1966 College of the Ozarks in Clarksville, Ark.

* Career: Spent four years coaching seventh- and eighth-grade boys basketball at Advance High School and became head coach at Scott County Central in 1970. Named to the Missouri Basketball Hall of Fame in 1991.

* State championships: 12 state titles as Scott County Central High School boys basketball coach.

* Record: 636-132 (.828 winning percentage)