Long-time UA sports historian and statistician Jon Alquist died peacefully at his Tucson home last week while watching the Arizona-UConn men's basketball game. At 84, Alquist probably couldn't have asked for a more favorable setting.
A graduate of Catalina High School and the UA, Alquist had encyclopedic knowledge of Wildcat sports. He began serving as the interim sports information director at Bear Down Gym in 1959 when he was 19. He went on to become a lieutenant in the Air Force, serving in Thailand and France before returning home to work at the UA. Alquist once told me he hadn't missed a UA home football game for 39 years.
Fans and players try to get their hands on the Territorial Cup after Arizona State faced Arizona in a football matchup at Arizona Stadium on Nov. 25, 2022.
Alquist helped to discover the long-lost Territorial Cup Trophy, tucked away in an obscure Phoenix display case, 40 years ago. He attended many Olympic Games, mostly to follow track and field, a sport in which he could tell you who won the 1968 gold medal in the 200 meters to who won the 1949 Border Conference triple jump. He was a member of the UA Sports Hall of Fame selection committee for the last quarter-century.
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Across the last 20 years, Alquist would quietly sit in the small media audience for post-game interviews at McKale Center and Arizona Stadium, always in the back row. The younger people in the audience had no idea who Alquist was and what he had accomplished, and those he knew so well, from Pop McKale to Fred Enke and Fred Snowden. I'll sure miss my conversations with Jon, which were almost always full of interesting historical sports data.
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