Good evening, everyone, and welcome to the informal meeting of the Joplin City Council for Monday, November the 2nd, 2026.

We have one item on the agenda.

We will hear from the Joplin Sports Authority for their quarterly update.

Good evening, Jared.

Good evening.

Thank you for having

me.

It should be fairly brief, and I'm the only one on the agenda, so I can take longer if you'd like.

But uh I'll try to I'll try to be fairly brief with this and have some.

Don't make us throw

things at you.

Uh

so today I'm gonna uh visit a little bit of informational stuff about JSA just to remind uh some of you that uh because I do present like three or four times a year depending on the schedule.

I'll talk about the Hall of Fame class of 2026.

We had that in October.

I'll talk about a collab a collaborative event and I'll explain some of that with uh Velo Solutions uh pump track, and then I'll give you some updates on some of our events and recruitment of events.

So we are a

not-for-profit.

Uh we're a sports commission, not for profit, and really all we do is we try to attract, promote, provide, and support local, state, regional, national, international sporting events to enhance the quality of life for our citizens as well as generate revenue uh for the economy and Joplin area.

We

have 11 board members.

The the ones that you see are underlined.

Um our new chair is JT.

Uh he was he lives here in Joplin, works at uh uh Lowe's over in Carthage, just got transferred over there, but he lives here in Joplin.

He was on the board before uh term limited out and then took a year off and came back and was elected uh to be the chair of the board.

And then Ted Easley also, the last time we met, you guys had voted on adding him as well as he's a new member.

He's stepping in wonderfully into the role, understanding what we do uh with that.

And then Hunter Perry was actually already on the board, but he was added for another term.

So

the Joplin Area Sports Hall of Fame in 2026 was in early October.

We had this year's class, Nicole Hudson, and I don't know if you recall her or not, softball player uh from the from the area here, played at Mizzou and then played on the U.S.

Olympic team.

Uh so she was inducted.

She actually uh worked at Southern for one year as uh one of my coaches when I was there as the AD.

Forrest Reed, he passed away, unfortunately, about a year ago in October this last year, but he was a track coach, uh, volunteered in a lot of a lot of community activities.

Uh he was heavily engaged.

He was a track coach actually for the 1978 Memorial High track and field.

So uh that was posthumous, but uh his son was able to accept award on his behalf.

Uh the track team was there from 1978, they were state champs.

And uh in addition, the 84 baseball was a state championship team.

They were inducted into there as well.

And then you'll see that we we added the uh Joplin Globe sports writers.

So it was Jim Henry, Jim Fryer, Wendell Redden, and Anvil.

Those were some of the folks that were there, and you can see uh two of them up there talking uh in the picture.

Our Hall of Fame selection committee, we start meeting actually in November.

So we'll start meeting again.

We have the event in October.

We meet once a month.

So uh I'm the chair of that committee.

Jeff Starkweather is on that committee.

He was the athletic director at Joplin High for years.

Patty Vaber was a track coach uh at Missouri Southern, also track coach at Carthage High School back in the 80s.

Uh Sean Buck works in the JSA office.

Andy Youngworth was a track coach at Carthage.

Now he's the track coach here at the Catholic School.

Um he's won some championships as well since he's been on that board.

So I expect we'll see his name going in at some point.

The first state championships they've ever actually had at McCauley uh was with him.

Bob Tignor was also the AD at at Joplin High back in the day.

Uh Kevin Welch is on there.