NJCAA Hall of Fame Westark college baseball coach Bill Crowder dies at 89
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Longtime Westark baseball coach Bill Crowder wrote a memoir in 1992 titled “Success is More Than Wins,” a message he lived by until his death Monday at the age of 89.
The cause of death has not been made public.
“Well, first of all, I think, other than a coach, I just think he was truly a very compassionate person, a very caring person,” said current Southside High School coach Dale Harpenau, one of his players from 1981-82 who later followed him as coach at the school. “He always made you feel important. So I viewed him more probably as a coach, for me anyway, it was a variety of different ways, but as a mentor towards me throughout his career.”
In 33 baseball seasons, Crowder accomplished a 1,003-559 record. Among the topfive winningest coaches in NJCAA history upon retirement in 1998, he was inducted into the NJCAA and UAFS Hall of Fames and produced four major leaguers.
The school’s baseball stadium, opened in 1994, is named Crowder Field in his honor.
Born on Feb. 4, 1933, in Perryville, Arkansas, to Dewey and Sybil Crowder, the coach began his career in multiple sports at Ozark and Springdale at the high school level, prior to being hired as baseball and basketball coach at Fort Smith Junior College in 1965. The school was renamed to Westark in 1966 and eventually to University of Arkansas-Fort Smith as it became a four-year institution.
As coach, Crowder led the school’s basketball team for three seasons before focusing solely on baseball over the next 30 years. The former brought an old-school mentality of chewing tobacco stains to the business, his personality rubbing off on teams having the reputation of being “tough,” “tenacious” and playing harder than the opposition.
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Described as a simple man by former player and assistant Jim Wiley, Crowder put an emphasis on building relationships that went beyond the ballpark.
“He did it with all of them in some way, shape or form,” Wiley said. “He’d take them to his house and feed them spaghetti dinner or let them swim at his house in his pool or he’d grab maybe two or three players and go out on a boat to go fishing.
“At the time, you thought, ‘Well, he just likes to fish,’ but really, he was just doing it to get to know his guys. And that’s probably what separated him from so many people is he knew so much about each player that it was really remarkable.”
At a time when high school baseball was far less prevalent in Arkansas, Crowder connected with American Legion coaches like Squeaky Smith to find talent, in addition to recruiting others like future big leaguers Kevin Lomon (New York Mets, Atlanta Braves) and Ryan Nye (Philadelphia Phillies) from nearby Cameron. Harpenau’s roommate Jeff McKnight from Conway played for the Mets and the Baltimore Orioles, while Aaron Looper from Ada, Oklahoma pitched for the Seattle Mariners.
“There had been times when people said Westark had a better pitching staff than the University of Arkansas sometimes because quite possibly, it did,” Harpenau said.
For Harpenau and Wiley, however, his impact is seen even more in the community. A deacon at First Christian Church, Crowder had a giving nature, created personalized relationships and wrote letters to parents about how athletes were doing away from home.
According to Wiley, Crowder played an “integral part” in integrating the athletics program and opened the door for a believed 527 players to advance to four-year institutions.
“Even up until a month ago, he would sit and talk to me and he would reminisce about players,” Wiley said. “He never forgot them. He remembered how good of a player they were, where they went to school or what they became and how successful they are.”
Visitation with the family will take place from 1-5 p.m. on Sunday at the Ocker-Putman Funeral Home and funeral services are scheduled for 1 p.m. on Monday in the Stubblefield Center at UAFS.
You can follow Bryant Roche on Twitter @BRocheSports and you can email him at BRoche@gannett.com
This article originally appeared on Fort Smith Times Record: Bill Crowder dies at 89: Former Westark college baseball coach
