Published on Show Me Mizzou Dec. 19, 2024
Story by Joe Walljasper, BJ ’92
A Missouri basketball uniform is a standard piece of polyester athletic wear, distinguishable from countless others only by color, lettering and logo. But that’s not the way Grace Slaughter sees it.
When Slaughter puts on the uniform, she thinks of the fourth-grade version of herself at her first Mizzou basketball camp. She thinks about her grandfather John Cianciolo, a diehard fan who was the first person she called after she committed to Mizzou. She thinks about her mom, Rebecca Slaughter, in the stands at South Carolina last year, a black-and-gold dot in a sea of garnet, because these four years will go by too fast, and she has no intention of missing a single one of her daughter’s games.
“It means so much to me,” says Slaughter, a 6-foot-2-inch sophomore guard. “It’s such a huge blessing to be here and be able to wear this uniform.”
When Slaughter was growing up in Grain Valley, her family’s weekends often were loosely arranged around whatever game the Tigers were playing on TV. When she got to step on the Mizzou Arena court for a basketball camp, she started dreaming about being the one in the uniform who other little girls watched.
As Slaughter grew into one of the state’s best basketball players, she closely followed the careers of homegrown MU stars Sophie Cunningham and Hayley Frank, who both surpassed 2,000 career points. In her first year at Mizzou, Slaughter was named to the SEC’s All-Freshman team after averaging 11.5 points.
“Everyone who’s here has a goal to make a positive impact on the program and the university,” Slaughter says. “I’m playing because I love it, but it would be great to have an impact like they did.”
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