At the outset, I must apologize to Robin Goddard.
During our interview, he stressed that “I’m not the story” that I am about to share with you.
Robin is publicity-shy. That’s why there is no accompanying photo.
Preferring to work behind the scenes, nevertheless, he’s been in the forefront of several major projects at Orchard Lake St. Mary’s Prep for nearly four decades.
It seems everyone knows of or about Robin Goddard. Students, alumni, parents, administrators, maintenance staff, the media, archdiocese, Catholic League, the Michigan High School Athletic Association, local civic officials – the list goes on and on.
Goddard, 58, a native of St. Louis, Mich., some 15 miles south of Mount Pleasant, arrived at Orchard Lake to attend St. Mary’s College in 1976. After graduating with a degree in history, he gave up on a notion to be an Anglican missionary and spent a year volunteering in the Eskimo community near the Bering Sea.
Owing some of his tuition at St. Mary’s, he returned to work part-time on campus to pay it off. He accepted a subsequent offer to remain full-time.
His title today – director of athletic facilities and sports information – doesn’t give a hint to his involvement and contributions to a wide array of campus events and projects.
The centerpiece of OLSM’s athletic facilities is the red artificial carpet installed on the football field four years ago, believed to be only the second high school in the USA with a red turf, the first on this side of the Mississippi.
Goddard visited Eastern Washington University to get a firsthand view of its red turf before embarking on a successful $600,000 campaign in the face of criticism from those favoring the traditional green. That’s a sizable chunk of $3.3 million Goddard said he has raised to cover the expenses of his athletic-related endeavors.
It’s in the area of sports information that Goddard has left his indelible mark in St. Mary’s annals with the publication of two volumes on the history of basketball and football.
They are monumental accomplishments.
The third update of football history, 1912-2016, published this fall, has the date and score of every one of the 703 games (won 473, lost 222, tied 8) the Eaglets have played in 79 autumns, broken down by each of 150 different opponents.
The basketball history work, which came out in 2006, followed a similar format with scores of each and every one of the 1,660 games (1,145 wins, 515 losses), including an opponent-by-opponent analysis.
Both compilations of about 100 pages each contain all the information you’d expect: names of 2,000-plus students who played the sports, roster of coaches, a rundown of memorable moments, photos of teams and individuals.
I can’t imagine the depth of Goddard’s commitment – six years for the basketball book, two years for football – beginning with research on campus, then branching out to libraries (the State of Michigan Library in Lansing with its microfilms of every newspaper in the state was particularly invaluable), archdiocesan and Catholic League archives, personal interviews, and a host of other resources.
“If he couldn’t find the score of a game, let’s say in 1920, it was anathema to him,” said Len Karschnia, administrator and sports statistician.
“I wanted to get it right, so I researched and verified,” Goddard said.
Goddard was inspired by a similar history about Muskegon High done by Ron Pesch, MHSAA historian. “‘Why not us?’ I asked. No one has more history than we do.”
He’s working on updating the basketball volume and beginning the history of baseball, which has already produced a golden nugget: Goddard came across Michael Aloysius Peploski, a 1909 graduate, who went on to Seton Hall University, where he played for two years before signing on with the Detroit Tigers.
Nicknamed “Pepper,” he appeared in only two games for the Tigers, both as a third baseman, on June 24 and June 26, 1913. He had two hits in four at bats and scored a run.
Sorry, Robin. You are the story.
Don Horkey may be reached at [email protected]
