When the baseball diamond was behind central hall, the Roche Sports Complex did not yet exist, and Jack McAvoy and Frank “Muddy” Waters were working in athletics on campus, Joan and Bill Van Arsdalen moved to Hillsdale, and Bill soon began working with scorekeeping for the football team, then for the basketball team.
That was approximately 40 years ago — this basketball season was his last, as he plans on retiring from scorekeeping at the college.
“There’s a fair amount of pressure doing that job,” said Professor of history Tom Conner, who worked at the scorer’s table with Van Arsdalen. “You don’t want to mess up. I always say, ‘You know you’re doing a good job when you’re working at the scorer’s table and nobody notices you.’ You only get noticed when you miss something or get something wrong. But we work together — it really is like a team. That’s one of the things I’ve always enjoyed most about it. Bill is kind of the captain of the team.”
Van Arsdalen arrived on campus, first announcing for the football team. He then quickly took to working on the scoring for football. Back then the sports building was Stocks field House, and Jack McAvoy was athletic director.
“Jack was a wonderful man,” Van Arsdalen said. “He made the athletic department. He was just a great athletic director. As a matter of fact, he was the driving force behind the Roche Center. We’ve seen a lot of changes up there over the years. From that old dungeon to that place now— it’s beautiful.”
Joan Van Arsdalen taught social dance at the college for 23 years. While Joan now bakes cookies for the people at the scorer’s table, she used to bake cookies for the whole football team when they traveled to away games.
“We had football players that would eat dinner with us and lay on the floor and watch the football game,” she said. “We had college kids out here. It was almost like a ‘Just let me know you’re coming.’ It was just a place for them to get away from school for a time.”
Van Arsdalen even had a good relationship with the referees, Conner said.
“He liked to banter with the referees as well,” he said. “You know we don’t get the same refs every game, but it’s the same pool. You could always tell, they’d come over to greet us at the table, he’d have a quip for them.”
Along with some of Van Arsdalen’s other co-wokers, the referees are sad to see him retire.
“It’s funny because particularly in the last few years, the refs have come up to me, and say to me, ‘oh, I wondered if you’d be back this year,’’ Van Arsdalen said. “This year I was telling them, ‘Next year you’re going to be getting someone new because I’m going to hang it up after 40 years.’ They said, ‘Oh, you can’t do that.’”
Van Arsdalen said Hillsdale’s basketball scorer’s table is one of the better tables that the referees encounter, and they often comment on how well it is handled.
Next year, Pat Hornak will be the score clock operator and Anthony Manno will be the shot clock operator. Van Arsdalen said because their schedule has always been based on sports games, now they will be able to travel more freely if they wish, he said.
“I wrote him this, and I’m sure he’s heard it from a lot of others, I think retirement is a great thing,” Conner said. “Especially when you can look back like he can on 40 years of a job very well done on his part. I hope he’ll take great satisfaction in that. And like I said, we’ll miss him. It won’t be the same.”
