Yeager compiles SCC sports records

As the assistant athletic director at SCC, Ed Yeager is in charge of ensuring academic success of the student athletes. Yet his office is littered with ancient stat sheets, and his computer is filled with Excel spreadsheets full of historical SCC data. Ever since he has committed to shedding light on SCC’s historical athletic records, box scores and spreadsheets have become more common than grade checks and eligibility forms in his office.

Yeager has been at SCC for years, and said his tenure on the SCC baseball team in 1990 led to his interest in discovering the history of SCC’s sport’s records.

“We had a kid and I can’t remember how many homeruns he hit, but I remember thinking to myself that’s got to be some kind of record,” said Yeager. “But I come to find out we didn’t have any school records on baseball, we didn’t have any school records in anything. So I started doing research.”

Yeager’s research began by establishing baseball records.

“I was able to dig up stats sheets and season totals that I found in file cabinets in the back and I was able to assemble a school record section for baseball,” said Yeager.

After resigning as the SCC baseball coach, Yeager became the assistant athletic director. Once again it was speculation of a record-breaking performance, this time in football, which prompted Yeager’s search. He used microfilm from the Scottsdale Tribune (formerly The Scottsdale Progress) to gather stats from the box score posted in the paper. While he found plenty of useful SCC statistics, Yeager said the process wasn’t exactly enjoyable.

“Oh man it was brutal,” said Yeager.

Patience paid off. Yeager was able to find statistics all the way back to 1972 when SCC was founded. After he was able to acquire all of the stats in baseball and football, Yeager turned his effort towards the remaining sports. He says he is now halfway done with basketball, and explains that it is a lot more difficult than football or baseball.

“Basketball plays different nights of the week,” said Yeager. “So first you have to find the correct paper, then you have find the sports section, then you have to read the whole sports page just to find the little information on Scottsdale Community College.”
While the process has been difficult, Yeager’s work is leading to the discovery of new records and school milestones.

This year’s men’s soccer team has won 11 games which, thanks to Yeager’s statistics, has since been revealed as a new school record. As of right now Yeager has finished compiling records and statistics for baseball, basketball, football, and soccer. Cross country, tennis, track and golf are tougher sports to accumulate since they are based off of a national website. That said, the headaches and long hours are well-worth it as Yeager is quite happy with the job he’s done.

“I’m pretty proud of this because this took a lot of work,” said Yeager. Adding jokingly “Now I know what sports information people do, and why they have a staff.”