Numbers a part of ACU history, but only tell part of the story

When I was growing up, the only thing I ever wanted to be was a play-by-play guy. I was going to say “the only thing I ever wanted to do for a living,” but it was never about the money. It’s what I wanted to be. Not because sports broadcasting was a good career field to get into but because I loved sports.

And that love may be better expressed in numbers than words. The numbers on the backs of the jerseys and the fronts of the scoreboards. Regular and Roman. And, of course, the stats. Most of the mornings of my youth were spent crunching numbers from the sports page along with my breakfast cereal. And prepping to call countless games in every conceivable sport has kept me on a steady diet of digits for the last 25 years.

So as 2015 begins, I’m thinking about numbers. First of all, this is a great year for a football play-by-play guy. Just saying it sounds like I’m calling a touchdown run (“20! 15!”). But I’m also thinking of the numbers that have special significance to ACU Athletics.

Starting with 20 and 15: the former is how many individual titles golfer Alex Carpenter recorded, the most in NCAA history; the latter is the number worn by Mitchell Gale, the small-town quarterback with the big-time arm who left ACU as the leading passer in school and Lone Star Conference history.

Like 93, ACU’s point total in a record-shredding blowout of West Texas A&M in a 2008 playoff game. In football. (Add an apostrophe, and you get the year ACU’s golf team produced a team title and individual champ in Jeev Singh.)

Like 64, the amount of national championships won by Wildcat teams through the years – mostly by the dynastic track and field teams – the fifth most of any school in NCAA history; not to mention the jersey numerals of Vitamin T. Smith, ACU’s football phenom who went on to lead the NFL in kick returns for the Los Angeles Rams.

Like 69, the yards between Ove Johansson’s right foot and the crossbar at Shotwell Stadium on Oct. 16, 1976, when the native Swede kicked a world record field goal that still stands.

Like 44, as in how many games in a row the men’s basketball team won at Moody Coliseum from 1984-88, and the digits worn by Henry Willis, who in 1968 transferred to ACU to play hoops for Dee Nutt and in so doing became ACU’s first African-American athlete.

Like 3, the personal gold medal haul at the 1956 Olympic Games in Australia of iconic Wildcat sprinter and Sports Illustrated Sportsman of the Year Bobby Morrow, and the number worn by current men’s basketball sharpshooter Parker Wentz and former running back, ACU’s all-time rushing leader, Bernard Scott – perhaps the only obvious commonality shared by young men from vastly different worlds who nonetheless have left a lasting impression on ACU sports fans and on whom a lasting impression has been left by their experiences here.

Like 8, the Elite version, which the ACU women’s basketball team reached in 1996 when Jennifer Clarkson, whose No. 25 remains the only retired jersey in ACU hoops history, led the Wildcats into Fargo, N.D., where they made it as far as the national semifinals. (The team making it to Fargo wasn’t nearly as surprising as the fact I somehow got there to call the quarterfinal game despite flying in that day through a canceled flight and blinding snowstorm. Remind me to tell you that story later.)

Like 19, the height (in feet) cleared by pole vaulter Billy Olson before any other human ever had indoors, as well as the age (in years) of the great Earl Young when he – as an ACU sophomore! – ran the second leg on the 4 x 400 relay team that won a gold medal for the U.S. in Rome and set an Olympic and world record.

Like 82, the number of games coached by former head football coach Chris Thomsen and the number of post-game phone calls Thomsen once told me he received from Wally Bullington – the former player, national championship winning coach, and athletics director emeritus – whose record of encouraging ACU coaches and players remains unblemished. It is that spirit and ethic that permeates this program and cannot be quantified.

A new year usually means at least a few chapters of the ACU record books will be rewritten, but for now I’ll let Moses have the last word and number. For the last 20 New Year’s Days or so, I’ve meditated on Psalm 90, the only one he wrote. It has a way of recalibrating my sensibilities and setting my sights on the upcoming year in numerical terms. Moses wrote:

“We live at best to be seventy years old, maybe eighty, if we’re strong….Teach us to number our days so we can have a wise heart.”

Here’s to happy days and wise hearts in 2015.