Political Quotes

“last week I received news that my high school basketball and track coach, Jerry Applebee, had died. I want to take a moment here on the Senate floor to pay tribute to him. He was a deeply formative figure for me in my teenage years, setting an example for us players of hard work, determination, and sportsmanship. Together with my dad, also a coach, he founded the Jones County Invitational Basketball Tournament, which is my hometown's annual regular-season basketball tournament--the longest running tournament of its kind in South Dakota, started back in the 1960s--an event I played in and still love attending to this day. Among the memories I have of Coach Applebee, a lot of them are around that auditorium. And the floor there--the court--is called the Jerry Applebee Court in his honor. As I recall my days playing basketball there, there was one thing that you never could miss in any game in which he was involved, and that was his loud voice bouncing off the ceiling in that auditorium. That auditorium was built in 1954. At the time, it was kind of the Taj Mahal among auditoriums--gymnasiums--in my part of South Dakota, and, to this day, it continues to serve our school and the surrounding schools really well.…”