KIRKSVILLE, Mo. — This meeting room used to be a nursery.
That was back when the building was a hospital, when it housed patients and gurneys. Now, it houses the football offices of Division II Truman State University.
In big decal letters stuck to the nursery-turned-meeting-room wall, visible through the hallway window, is a slogan: “Effort is our edge.”
A few hundred feet away, through a wood-paneled gymnasium and a well-loved, often-shared weight room, is the field.
Stokes Stadium seats roughly 4,500 people in its singular block of bleachers. The press box is new; the Bulldogs’ locker room is not.