If you say nothing else about the year 2016 in Ozarks sports, you can at least say it was interesting.
There were off-field problems, on-field stints of individual and team excellence, and athletes with local ties representing the United States in international competition.
There were area high schools making history, student-athletes making names on a national scale, and some of the biggest names in sports coming to southwest Missouri.
As chosen by the News-Leader sports staff, here are the picks for the top 16 sports stories for 2016 …
1. The Breck Ruddick saga
There was one sports story in the Ozarks in 2016 that rose to a national level — for all the wrong reasons.