Farm boy to head honcho, Sterk uses his past to lead Missouri

Jim Sterk never envisioned leaving Whatcom County.

The Missouri athletics director grew up in Nooksack, Washington, a town of about 1,500 people just south of the Canadian border. He lived on a farm, was a good student and once totaled his 1967 Plymouth Roadrunner by hitting a Holstein dairy cow that had wandered onto the road.

It’s a rural area, a place where the people are mild-mannered and the milk is fresh. When you visit, it’s like going back in time.

“(You had) church on Sundays, you played ball like mad, you worked the farms like mad during the summer, and you were too tuckered out to get into much trouble back then,” said Scott Stokes, Sterk’s lifelong friend.

Sterk’s college days were formative. He learned skills at Western Washington University that led him from Whatcom County to Missouri, with several stops in between. The relationships Sterk, 60, developed in school still affect him as an administrator, and he carries with him the lessons he learned as a student-athlete.