Honored to serve

By Ashlyn Quesinberry, reprinted from The Bison

After 32 years, Sandra Harris Boaz (’69) retired as the volunteer bookkeeper for the men’s basketball team.

In 1964, Boaz and her family moved to Searcy so that she and her three siblings could enroll at Harding Academy. Boaz’s father, Bill Harris, was a life insurance agent who officiated track and football and became an instrumental volunteer at both Harding Academy and the University.

Boaz and her husband, Ned (’66), met at Harding where he played basketball for the Bisons. After he graduated, he played for Carder Buick in the Amateur Athletic Union league, and Boaz figured out bookkeepers were cheating their team out of points. She then decided she was going to keep a book, too, so that she could keep the other bookkeepers honest. This is how her love for bookkeeping began.

She started out occasionally substituting for Harding’s bookkeeper, Joe Pryor (former vice president for academic affairs), in 1983. She said she was a nervous wreck when she would sub for him. The job requires a lot of concentration, and what the bookkeeper has in their book is the last line of defense for the referees.

In 1987, she started keeping the book full time. She said for the first few years she was still a nervous wreck, and one of the fastest lessons she learned while on the job was to always screw the lid back on her drinks because basketballs fly around everywhere.

Becoming friends with the referees and the other table members was a highlight for her; she said the referees were not happy about her retirement.

“It’s really a team effort,” Boaz said. “I don’t do anything on my own. This isn’t all about me. If I missed something, someone was always there to help me figure it out.”

Boaz’s spirit for volunteering was passed on to her from her father. Harris was the Bison Booster Club president in 1965 and was instrumental in starting the Harding Athletics Hall of Fame. She said keeping the book is mind-intensive and that she never knew the importance of a sharp pencil until she started bookkeeping. She kept books for both men’s and women’s basketball until 20 years ago when she moved her focus to men’s.

She said she will miss the camaraderie she has built with the referees and the people at the table. As bookkeeper, she said she was supposed to be unbiased, but the referees all know she was not.

Over the years, Boaz became the No. 1 fan for the basketball teams. She watched team practices and she and her husband always traveled to the Great American Conference Tournament. She started making both the teams chocolate cakes in 2000 for player’s birthdays.

“She makes a chocolate-on-chocolate cake for us, and they are always really good,” junior Jenni Nadeau, a guard for the women’s basketball team, said.

In 2015, she had to cut back on the amount of cakes she made because she was diagnosed with breast cancer. She planned all of her surgeries around the season. She thought she was going to have to quit that year, but she pushed through and made it through the season. She has struggled with her health some this year but said the only thing that would have caused her to miss a game was being in the hospital.

She has been a dedicated fan and bookkeeper for both of the teams for 32 years and said she will not ever lose contact with them.

“It won’t hit me until the basketball season starts back up again,” Boaz said. “It’s been my honor to serve.”