By: Larry Moritz, Salina Journal
Fifty-six games in 18 days sounds like the ultimate road trip for a basketball junkie. David Toelle will see exactly that without having to leave his front row seat at the Bicentennial Center.
Whoever coined the phrase "March Madness" had Toelle in mind. The sports information director and Webmaster at Kansas Wesleyan University, Toelle is hired each year to help compile statistics for three March tournaments at the Bicentennial Center -- the boys and girls Class 4A state tournament, the men's and women's NJCAA Region 6 tournament, and the NJCAA Women's National Tournament running this week at the Bicentennial Center.
This year, for the first time, he is providing stats for all 56 games on his own. Toelle does not work with a staff of underlings, compiling the information they give him. He does the work himself while sitting in front of his laptop computer.
"You have to have a love for the game," Toelle said. "If you come in looking at this as just a job, you're going to burn out real quick. I even get burnt out sometimes, but I just have to remember this is something I love doing."
When Toelle keeps stats for a basketball game, it includes everything: shots made and attempted, 3-pointers, free throws, offensive and defensive rebounds, turnovers, steals, blocked shots, fouls and assists. All that can get rather hectic when there are a series of missed shots and offensive rebounds on one possession, or when teams go through a flurry of steals and turnovers in a short period of time.
Toelle admits being a one-man stats crew would be impossible if he had to do all the work by hand, using pen and paper. With the computer programs he uses, it is more of a point-and-click process, which allows him to keep his head up and his eyes on the game.
"A lot of people ask 'How can you do that?' " Toelle said. "You have to see things out of the corner of your eye. You have to have good peripheral vision.
"When I first got started in 1996 when I was still a student at Wesleyan, it helped to have someone else there. Now I feel like I can do it in my sleep."
In fact, he does do it in his sleep at times, admitting that the work will occasionally invade his time away from the game.
"Sometimes I dream about doing stats," Toelle said. "And when I'm at home watching games on TV and I hear a whistle, my finger moves. I've trained myself so that whenever the whistle blows to push the key that controls the clock on my computer.
"My wife will ask me 'What are you doing?' But I can't help it. When the whistle blows, my finger goes."
While 56 games in less than three weeks is an unusually large load for Toelle, he has plenty of experience before the month of March rolls around. He keeps stats for all Kansas Wesleyan men's and women's games, KWU junior varsity games, some Brown Mackie men's and women's games, and worked the Region 6 Division II tournament at Muir Gymnasium. He will also keep stats for the Kansas Cagerz this spring.
In all, Toelle's totals include keeping statistics on 138 games since November, with another 15 games at the NJCAA women's tournament between today and Saturday night. His computer tells him that, prior to Wednesday's games, he had seen 15,088 points scored and 11,073 rebounds in 133 games.
The hours can be long at this time of year. Toelle goes to work at Wesleyan at 8 a.m. and often doesn't return home to his wife Jennifer and two-year-old son Trae until nearly 11 p.m. But he also doesn't see himself changing careers in the near future.
"I started out helping do stats at Wesleyan games," Toelle said. "I realized I like sports and I like computers. What better job could I have that I could put both together and get paid to do it?
"My wife is not a big sports fan, but she knows this is what I love to do and she's understanding of it."