"The important thing is not to have everything memorized, it's to know where you can find it." 

When Tony Miller is combing through troves of scorebooks and programs from the years of sports long forgotten by some, it is a line that he uses to stay organized. A line that he learned during a library orientation when he was in the 9th grade. Miller is the Goshen College athletics statistician.

For three years now I have sat just two or three seats down from Miller at the scorers table in the Ruth Gunden Gymnasium while broadcasting Goshen athletic events on The Globe, me calling the game, him punching in live stats that allow me to do my job even better. Truth be told, when we were first handed this assignment, I had no idea who I was going to highlight; however, a conversation with Miller after a midweek basketball doubleheader put my full attention towards him.

He told me a story about Alex Childers, a former Goshen head baseball coach. Childers was with the team on a road series in Tennessee throwing batting practice before a game when a line drive shot off a bat and caught him directly in the face. 

He finished with something along the lines of "talk about a tough scene when your head coach has to get reconstructive surgery because of batting practice." 

Walking away all I could think of is how anyone could possibly keep track of hundreds upon hundreds of stories like that? 

Miller was born in Goshen 31 years ago this upcoming May, just three blocks west of the campus of Goshen College. As he puts it, Goshen College was his backyard filled with childhood memories of running around the campus lawns and picnicking with his family. Miller's first introduction to sports stems from his father, a former cross country coach at Goshen College, but just like dad, baseball was his favorite. That introduction sprouted into watching, and imitating, the Cubs in the afternoon after school running the bases in his living room just like the players on TV, and listening to Chip Carey in his early play-by-play years, and eventually, an interest in becoming just like those play-by-play professionals he heard on TV. 

Miller smirked after telling me about those early introductions to sports and pushed back in his chair, "it was this whole, these people are getting paid to talk about baseball all the time, I know how to talk, I already have somewhat of a grasp on baseball, I bet I can do that. That's cool."

He got his first real dose of working behind the scenes in sports in his 6th or 7th grade year at Bethany Christian keeping books for the high school baseball team. That turned into stat keeping and public address work with the soccer team and basketball teams, and eventually landed him at Goshen College as a communications major broadcasting on 91.1 The Globe. 
The transition back to stats came when he realized that he was in a place where he could not pick writing over broadcasting and vice versa. 

"I didn't love broadcasting enough to not write, I didn't love writing enough not to broadcast" was how he put it. Miller actually believes that his demo site with his play-by-play clips is still online, though, he is not sure he wants to go back and listen to them. He did however win the award for best basketball play-by-play in 2014 presented by the Intercollegiate Broadcasting System as it is written in his goleafs.net profile.

Now in his 14th year of being at Goshen College, Miller has been on campus for longer than any of the athletic department's head coaches, as he puts it, he has been around the block a time or two. I was still curious how he could possibly manage to remember all of the history that he has accumulated over his tenure at Goshen. His answer was a quick reference to the easiest spot to find the vintage Maple Leafs logo, the front license plate of John Ingold's car. It was the perfect representation for the model that he goes by on a day to day basis. 

"[Ingold] was here for a long time when that was our logo … his model speaks to how I accumulated the history of Goshen College athletics. You just sort of do it for a day, do it for another, one foot in front of the other. Eventually you look back and you've been here for a while," he said.

He even says his office plays a large role in growing his database. It is small, no more than about seven feet deep and nine feet wide, with no windows, and is the home to five filing cabinets, all full of scorebooks and programs from Goshen College athletic events of decades gone by. Miller has gone through a majority of the files stashed in those filing cabinets. He's done so with such depth that he was able to reference the connection between the men's volleyball game against Lakeland University on January 27 of this year and the women's basketball game against Lakeland in 1996. While his work and wealth of knowledge is important to the history books, Miller's work also ensures that multiple other entities run smoothly. The athletic department as a whole, and media outlets like The Globe, Goshen College's on-campus radio station.

Justin DeWeese, assistant athletic director of communications and operations, works just a door over from Miller in the office that used to actually be Miller's. The two met after DeWeese joined the Goshen athletic department in 2021. 

"I first met him as I was moving stuff into my office, I think it was a Saturday," said DeWeese. DeWeese is nearly three years into his role at Goshen College and now works in close collaboration with Miller on gamedays.

I asked DeWeese how his relationship with Miller had grown in the short time that the two have worked together. DeWeese started smiling ear to ear and went into his story about his conversations with Miller in the after-hours of athletic events. "Games are over, I'm in my office writing recaps from the evening… sometimes we end up talking for 45 minutes at like 11:00 p.m." 

With someone like Miller who is so involved with the athletic department and preserving its history, it is easy to skip over the thought of what it would be like if he were not around. DeWeese put it best, "I thought I was a detail-oriented person, but when I compare myself to him I realize, he's the real detail-oriented one and I'm the big picture one."

If none of that painted a picture of just how crucial Miller is to the athletic world that surrounds Goshen College, then maybe this will. That childhood love of sports, study of broadcasting and communications in college, and work inside of Goshen athletics has made Miller a bit of a celebrity when it comes to the Crossroads League, arguably one of the most competitive NAIA athletic conferences in the country that includes Goshen College. DeWeese informed be that because Miller is so detailed and so knowledgeable about sports history and where to find specific information related to a multitude of topics, sports information directors from across the Crossroads League come to him to get their information so that they can stay up to date on things like records that have been broken, possible scenarios on making a postseason tournament, and more. It makes sense why he won first place for best sports coverage in 2014 from the Hoosier State Press Association.

Outside of Goshen, Miller continues his hobby of sports coverage as a part of the Society for American Baseball Research and as an editor for Un/Necessary Sports Research according to his bio on goleafs.net. He also has his own podcast on Spotify titled "About Stoppage Time" where he talks about stoppage time in Premier League soccer.

I think one of the best ways to summarize the work that Miller does came from an Instagram post of his from August of 2023. He wrote: "Absolutely no one asked for this. I did it anyway." Miller is the true embodiment of working behind the scenes to make everyone's Goshen College athletic experience the best that it can be through his dedication to the preservation of its history.