For the past four-plus decades, no one in Monarch Nation can think about Marysville High School football without fitting Ron Sabins into the equation.
Whenever MHS gridiron warriors have taken the field for the past 45 years, Sabins has been there, ready to chronicle what local players do as far as game stats.
For his work as a Monarch football statistician, Sabins is being inducted as an honorary member of the Marysville High School Athletic Hall of Fame.
He will join the shrine during ceremonies Friday evening.
Sabins, a 1958 graduate of Marysville High School, was also a Monarch athlete. He played football, basketball and baseball.
His late brother, Bob, had been a stat guy for the Monarchs for a few years and Sabins got into it as a way to help his sibling.
“Bob and I kept all the defensive stats for years,” said Sabins.”Walt (Henderson) and Jim (Gray) kept all the offensive stats.”
Henderson and Gray retired from the sidelines a number of years ago. Since then, Sabins has kept offensive stats for both the Monarchs and their weekly opponents from the press box.
He is the only stat man for the varsity team.
“The coaching staff keeps track of all the defensive stats,” he said. “I think they take those down after watching game films.”
Sabins began helping the program in the mid 1970s under then head coach, the late Dave Demchak.
He’s been there for each succeeding MHS coach, including Ed Starling (a new Hall of Famer), Hall of Famer Rich Weiskircher, Jeff Gafford, Morgan Cotter (who is in the Hall of Fame as an athlete) and current head coach Brent Johnson.
Sabins said there hasn’t been a great deal of change in compiling gridiron numbers.
“Stats are stats,” he said. “However, if there is one thing that has changed, it’s the speed of the game.
“It’s a much faster game than when I started years ago and with the hurry-up offenses, you have to really be on top of things.”
One big change in his career did occur during the 2019 season.
Marysville’s new stadium project was completed by the middle of September and included a new press box.
Sabins said the new facility is a welcome addition.
“It’s just so much different,” he said. “There is much more room in which to work and the view is such that I can see the entire field.
“You couldn’t do that with the old press box.”
Sabins, who worked for 24 years at Westinghouse and later retired from Honda of America, still compiles stats the “old-school” way with a scorebook and pencil.
On Friday evenings after every Monarch game (home and away), Sabins delivers a copy of the stats to the Journal-Tribune sports department for next-day publication.
He then delivers the same stats to the coaching staff the following morning.
“It’s always been rewarding for me to give the stats to the coaches,” he said. “All of them have been very cooperative with me.
“Over the past several years, a lot of stat people have gone the way of technology and are using I-pads,” said Sabins. “I’m really not a tech guy and I’m comfortable keeping stats the old way.”
That’s not always a bad thing, he said.
“There have been times when another stat person’s I-pad has gotten thrown out of the computer system,” he said. “When that happens, they always come to me for my stats that I manually write down.”
Although Sabins has been affiliated with the MHS football program for a long time, he doesn’t see giving up his exclusive position any time soon.
“I’d like to make it to 50 years, as long as I’m able to do it and enjoy it,” he said. “However, if it ever feels like it’s becoming a job or I can’t climb the bleachers to the press box, I’ll probably have to step down.
“Right now, though, I can’t see myself quitting.”