By MARK MOSCHETTI
For spufalcons.com
SEATTLE – She has worn the black-and-white zebra stripes at Seattle Pacific basketball games for more than 50 years. Yet during all that time, Joyce Haag never called anyone for a foul.
Tim Haag has put more than 100,000 points onto the scoreboard. Yet he never put the ball into the hoop during any of those same Falcon games.
Come Saturday afternoon, this brother-sister combination will cap all those decades of dependable, distinguished service when they take their seats at the Brougham Pavilion scoretable for the final time.
Joyce will enter everything into the official book and Tim will work the board and game clock when the SPU men close out the regular season by hosting Montana State Billings.
Tip-off on Senior Day is set for 2:00 p.m.
"I hired her back in 1972 when I was the sports information director," Tim, who's now 76, said of Joyce, now 74. "One of the reasons I wanted someone like her was because I knew she wouldn't be intimidated – though some coaches would try."
In fact, such a familiar and steady presence are the Haags that not only have they been well-acquainted with all the many Falcon coaches and players who have come through the gym over the years, they're also on a friendly, first-name basis with some of the long-time opposing coaches.
"My favorite coaches of all-time who came here were Brad Jackson at Western Washington (he also was an assistant with the Falcons for five seasons in the 1970s) and now Tony Dominguez (at Western)," Joyce said. "And Rusty Osborne from Anchorage was always great to have here." (Dominguez is now in his 31st year overall at WWU and 14th as head coach; Osborne is in his 35th year overall at UAA, 22nd as head coach).
That familiarity also extends to the guys in the black-and-white stripes who actually are calling the fouls, which Joyce, in her own striped shirt, subsequently enters into the scorebook and Tim puts onto the scoreboard.
"SPU staff and teams won't be the only ones missing the Haags next year and beyond. It's always reassuring to observe the relief on the faces of referees when they arrive at Brougham Pavilion and see Joyce and Tim in their customary positions at the scorer's table," athletic director
Dan Lepse said.
Added Tim, "We've been doing this longer than most of the referees that we've worked with over the last number of years have been alive. The ref we had last Thursday said, 'You guys were working games when my brother was playing at UPS (University of Puget Sound).'"
Frank MacDonald, who served as the sports information director from 1984-2007 said the reputation the Haags have built over the years definitely carried some weight.
"There's a lot of coaches, particularly in basketball, that get in the face (of scoretable people)," he said. "I know the officials always trusted Joyce and Tim. It's more than longevity. They set a standard and they were very professional and upstanding.
"I always thought those coaches who questioned them have no idea who they're dealing with. It's not a student or somebody who has only run the clock for a couple weeks. They knew what they were doing and they were confident in their abilities."
NOT YOUR TYPICAL COMMUTE
They are the ultimate early birds. If it's a Thursday doubleheader starting at 5:15 p.m., Tim and Joyce Haag will walk into the sports information office on the top floor of Brougham Pavilion sometime between 3:30 and 4. If it's a Saturday afternoon with a 2:00 p.m. start, you can almost set your watch to the fact that they'll be there by noon. And if it's one of the increasingly rare Thursday night single games with a 7:00 p.m. tip-off, they'll arrive by 5:00 or 5:15.
Part of that is they love being there and doing what they do. Part is also out of necessity. The Haags share a house (along with Patricia, Tim's wife of 45 years) in the community of Olalla, located between Port Orchard and Gig Harbor on the other side of Puget Sound. ("There's a post office, a school, and an auto repair shop," was Tim's description of Olalla.)
They'll do the short drive to the Southworth terminal, take the ferry across to Fauntleroy in West Seattle, then make the nine-mile trip to SPU. On the way back home, they'll typically drive all the way around (50 to 60 minutes) since ferry service isn't as frequent later in the evening.
"If you were to miss (a ferry) because of traffic or the game (went late), you wouldn't have another one until 10 or 11 o'clock, and we could be home by then," Tim said.
Once they're on campus, Joyce enters the rosters of both teams into the scorebook, and Tim walks down to the scoretable to set up the board. He is actually one of the very few who can do the main scoreboard, the sideboards (which list the five players currently in the game, their point totals and foul counts) and the game clock. At most other schools, one person does the board, another does the clock.
"It's not too bad doing the board and the clock – especially when I was younger, it wasn't bad at all," Tim said. "The key thing is what's important: timing, score, and fouls. The other stuff, like who's on the court (i.e., the sideboards) if it gets down to the end of the game and gets really hectic, you can let that slide. During the course of a game, you're catching up to that during play. But you really don't want to be doing that in the last minute of a game. it's just a matter of prioritizing things."
MAKING SURE IT'S RIGHT
While doing the official book hasn't changed too much in her 50-plus years of doing it (3-point field goals and keeping track of the alternating possession are two of the biggest differences from when she started), Joyce said there's still a certain mindset to the job.
"I've hardly ever gone to a game where I was just a fan. I don't cheer because I'm always working," she said. "It's a lot easier if you don't have to get yourself out of being a fan to being the book. You're supposed to be impartial because you're part of the refereeing crew. If you don't have to teach yourself to be (impartial) than if you're used to being up in the stands cheering, it's a lot easier."
Along those lines of impartiality, Joyce shared a somewhat humorous take on a story from long ago. Seems that legendary Falcons coach Les Habegger and his counterpart at Puget Sound, Don Zech, each insisted on having his own regular scorebook person when their teams played each other (even though by rule, the home book is considered to be the official book).
"Whenever we went down there, I had to go, and whenever they came up here (their guy) had to come up here," Joyce said. "We'd just sit there and laugh because we both knew that neither one of us was going to cheat.
"But we each got an extra paycheck out of it, so we didn't care," she added with smile, also noting that Habegger required her to do the scorebook in pen, "and we didn't have erasable ink back then."
It's not unusual for either of the Haags to interact with the officials during the course of a game. Maybe the clock needs a slight adjustment or maybe there's a question of which player was actually whistled for a foul.
Whatever the situation might be, both of them say the important things are to be discreet, professional, and above all, make sure it's right.
One of the more common instances is when a ref inadvertently says the wrong number, perhaps signaling "24" with his hands but saying "34." Or saying the number of the player who was fouled instead of the player who committed the foul.
"You don't want to make them look bad, so you're just trying to figure out how to get his attention without everyone knowing that he messed up," Joyce said. "Sometimes, they just don't realize it and you end up having to beep the horn and call them over. Then some referees will get halfway back to do the free throws and they go, 'Oh wow, I gave her the wrong number,' and they'll come back over (and correct it)."
In another humorous side story, she remembered a time when one official, who went on to work at the NCAA Division I level (as have several others over the years) came over during a brief break in play and asked, "Was that call right?" Joyce laughed, knowing she had no power to do anything about it, but she appreciated the verbal exchange with the ref.
"They're human, too," she said.
Just like the folks on the scoretable.
"I've done this for all these years, and I still make mistakes," Tim said. "You can't weigh on that. You just have to go on and do the next thing.
A WHOLE LOT OF BASKETBALL
It was a question for which it would be practically impossible to come up with a definitive answer. But it was a fun one to ask anyway
How many games do Tim and Joyce Haag figure they have worked over the years?
"Oh, wow – plenty," Joyce said. "When I first started, we had a JV team, so I did the JVs, too." (She also used to do women's games for a stretch of time after that program started in the mid-1970s, and still would fill in if needed.)
Added Tim, "Between 12 and 15 games a year, and usually some tournaments in there as well, and those would have an extra game. And we've done some NCA A tournaments."
Conservatively, figure well more than a thousand games for Joyce over the course of 50 years. Not quite that many for Tim, who also served two stints (1971-74 and 1979-81) as sports information director, so didn't work the table while doing other duties. There were also times when he worked out of the area, including at the family farm near Ephrata in Eastern Washington. He has been a regular on the table since the mid-1980s.
Regardless, it's a whole lot of basketball.
"Do the math, huh?" he said with a laugh.
They also used to be regulars at soccer games, Joyce would do the scoresheet (before stats became computerized) and Tim was on game clock or the mic as public address announcer.
In fact, it was at soccer games where MacDonald first became acquainted with them. He would go on to serve 23 years as Seattle Pacific's sports information director. Yet when he first started in 1984, Tim and Joyce already had been there more than a dozen years.
"What I remember is the stories (from the Haags)," he said. "We started the Far West Classic, which was a three-day soccer tournament, usually over Labor Day, with four games a day. You're up there in the press box nonstop for three days. So I was getting a narrative history of SPU soccer, then it would morph into basketball as we went along into the fall.
"It really helped me get a grip on what my job was, on the history of SPU athletics before my time," he added. "It was exceptional."
NOT THEIR PRIMARY JOB – BUT THEIR FAVORITE ONE
For the Haags, Falcon athletics is something they've done on the side. After his time in the sports information world, Tim worked at a mail order company in nearby Fremont before it moved to Indiana. He then caught on at K2, the ski manufacturing company, and was there for 11 years, working with some of their major accounts such as Amazon and REI. Joyce spent 20-plus years at K2 as market analyst. Both of them retired from there in 2017.
Tim also worked Seattle Sounders and Seattle Storm games. He gradually cut back on much of that, but both he and Joyce have stuck with SPU.
"When I retired from K2, I told them, 'I'm retiring from here. But I'm not going to give up all the fun stuff; I'm still doing all of the sports.'"
When the final buzzer sounds on Saturday, he and Joyce will retire from SPU sports, too – but Tim also said that if there's ever one of those last-minute situations where someone suddenly isn't able to make it to a game, just give them a call.
Lepse can hardly remember a time when he wasn't acquainted with them. He worked in the sports information office as MacDonald's assistant from 1984-89, then returned to the school as the head sports information director in 2008 before moving into the AD's chair in December 2022.
"We are extremely grateful for the dedication that Joyce and Tim have displayed at Seattle Pacific athletic events during the last six decades," Lepse said "They have provided extraordinary service to the university while always being reliable, professional and personable. Devoted gameday staff workers are difficult to find due to the many night and weekend games involved, and also because the scorebook and scoreboard duties are unique and frenetic."
Added MacDonald, "For a small athletic department staff to know they can count on them and that the quality (of their work) is up there – that's almost immeasurable.".
Immeasurable … unless you count putting more than a hundred thousand points onto the scoreboard …
… or more than a thousand games into the scorebook.
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