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Scorekeeper Clocks 3,500th Game At 89 Years Old

Sixty years and no time-outs for Peder Andersen, a score-table fixture at Livermore High.

When Peder Andersen, 89, first volunteered to keep score at a Livermore High School basketball game, Harry S. Truman was president, the Cold War was looming and basketballs were brown, not orange.

Sixty years and 3,500 games later, Andersen still diligently tabulates points, fouls, free throws and minutes for boys' freshmen, junior varsity and varsity teams.

"He's a hardworking man," said Steve Orth, Livermore's assistant varsity coach. "Extremely hardworking. Extremely active."

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"The only game he missed this year was because he went to the Rose Bowl."

At Livermore's Tuesday home game against De La Salle High School, Andersen will be pulled to center court for a special tribute, including unfurling a banner to be hung in his honor in the gymnasium.

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It was congratulations and handshakes all around for Andersen at last week's basketball games between Livermore and Foothill High School in Pleasanton — as that JV matchup actually marked his 3,500th game as scorekeeper.

"When they heard I've been doing this for 60 years and that this was my 3,500th game, they just shook their heads," Andersen said. "They just couldn't believe it. They couldn't believe it."

Andersen, who has razor-sharp recall for dates, was a Danish immigrant and is an alumnus of Amador Valley High School's class of 1941.

His scorekeeper role was mere happenstance when he went to a Livermore High basketball game in 1952 and then-Coach Lee Williford asked Andersen to fill in at the scoring table.

"His scorekeeper didn't show up," Andersen said.

From then on, it has been Andersen who travels with the team and records all game data.

"Wherever we are, he goes," Orth said.

And Andersen is not only the Livermore basketball statistician, he is also the official historian for everything "EBAL" — the league name he helped coin in the 1960s.

Back then, high school sports were played under a variety of hodgepodge monikers, such as Diablo or Tri-Valley.  

In 1963, Andersen suggested East Bay Athletic League — now known as EBAL — and it stuck, he said. 

In August, he will celebrate his 57th wedding anniversary. "I still think she's super," he said of his wife, Margaret.

His stand-out memory as scorekeeper was a 1970s game against Granada High School when a player shot, missed and the ball rebounded. 

"It bounced itself on top of the backboard," he said, still dazed some 40 years later. "The backboard was only two inches thick."

Andersen has been an eyewitness to 60 years of supposed advances in sports gear, shoes, training and even in the basketballs — once made of brown leather until the late 1950s when someone decided orange improved visibility.

Has any of this made a difference in the hoops game? In how athletes perform?

Not really, according to Andersen. "They're playing about the same," he said.

As for retiring from the scorekeeper gig, why would he?

"It's enjoyable because I meet a lot of nice people," Andersen said.

Orth, who was Livermore's head varsity coach in the 1980s and 1990s, said Andersen's accuracy, reliability and memory is remarkable.

"He's got a thing for numbers," Orth said. "He's well-liked. He gets along with all the kids. He knows all the referees."

"He's a very interesting man."

Tuesday's games against De La Salle are 4 p.m. for freshmen, 5:30 p.m. for junior varsity and 7 p.m. for varsity.

The tribute to Andersen is scheduled between the JV and varsity games.

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