As part of the buildup to the 75th Anniversary celebration for Claremont McKenna College (visit CMC's 75th Anniversary Countdown Page to learn more), we are reliving many of the great moments from CMS athletic department history over the 75-day countdown from April 17 to July 1. If you were a part of one of these great moments and would like to add to the memories, or if you would like to submit your memories of your own favorite CMS Athletics moment, fill out the form on our main 75th Anniversary page.
Great Moments from This Story
1960 Baseball: Stags Sweep 3 From Pomona, Finish 20-20 in First SCIAC Season
1975 Baseball: Stags Win SCIAC, Beat La Verne 20-19 in District Opener
1982 Women's Swim and Dive: Athenas Earn Top 20 Finish at First NCAA Championship (Arce's Final Year as AD)
CLAREMONT, Calif. - Claremont Men's College had already made progress on the physical foundation for its new athletic department in the 1950s, constructing the football and track complex in 1954 and finishing its gymnasium in 1957. What was still needed, though, was the human foundation to go with it.
Enter Bill Arce, who was hired at Pomona College in 1956 as an assistant coach and administrator, and who officially became the athletic director and head baseball coach at Claremont-Mudd when the new athletic department began competing in 1958. Beginning with his transition work in 1956, Arce had a 27-year tenure, coaching the Claremont-Mudd baseball program for 21 years from 1959-1979, and serving as the athletic director until 1983, before his well-earned retirement.
The legacy of Bill Arce and his wife Nancy remains prominent throughout Claremont McKenna and CMS Athletics to this day. The baseball team plays its home games at Arce Field. There is also the William B. Arce Scholarship Fund and the William B. Arce Professorship at CMC, and the William B. & Nancy T. Arce Hall of Excellence in Roberts Pavilion.
Earning those types of honors might have seemed like a long way away, when Arce began the daunting task of starting a nine-team athletic department from scratch. He hired Vince Reel, Jesse Cone and John Lepp to help with the coaching duties in 1958-59, and would add another key figure in the growth of CMS Athletics, Ted Ducey, to the Stag athletic department the following year.
Arce's baseball team got off to a strong start as well, with three straight 20-win seasons from 1959-61, including a three-game sweep of Pomona in its first SCIAC season in 1960. One of the stars of those early teams, Wes Parker, went on to win a World Series title, and several Gold Glove Awards, with the Los Angeles Dodgers and graced the cover of Sports Illustrated.
But it wasn't how he treated the stars that helped lay the foundation for CMS Athletics. Ed Heron was a part of that 1960 team that went 20-20 and finished in third place in its first year in the SCIAC, but his role wasn't so much hitting, pitching or baserunning, so much as helping out the team as a third-base coach. Even though he didn't get many at-bats, Heron counts Arce as one of the most important figures he has ever met.
"I have consistently over the years held the belief that next to my father, he was the most influential person in my life," Heron said. "He always treated me as a true member of the team. He cared for me, nurtured me and taught me the important lessons of life as to what it meant to be kind and decent and to do the very best that I could possibly be. These are lessons I've tried to live by and pass on to my three children and my eight grandchildren by my words, actions and deed. I was truly blessed to be referred to as a member of the team."
Arce led his Stag baseball teams to great success, with a SCIAC title in 1970, a district title in 1971, and another SCIAC title in 1975. The 1975 season also saw Claremont-Mudd win a 20-19 game against La Verne in the districts, against a team which featured four major leaguers, including perennial All-Star reliever Dan Quisenberry of Kansas City Royals fame.
Steve Rodriguez was a member of that team and still remembers Arce's speech before the NAIA District Tournament to this day.
"He didn't give a typical rah-rah jock speech," said Rodriguez. "It was a measured, yet motivating speech in which he essentially laid out his vision for CMC baseball. He read a couple letters from local baseball people who congratulated CMC for beating La Verne for the SCIAC championship. He let us know that it was quite a feat for a team coming from a top academic school to compete ... I would say the speech was the kind you would expect from a very articulate, knowledgable, motivating professor. In short, a very classy speech."
Arce led the Stags to within one game of the NCAA Division III World Series in 1979 in his final season as the baseball coach, and remained on board as an athletic director for four more years. His legacy in baseball is tangible, particularly in his awards and in his work in helping the game spread internationally. He took his Claremont-Mudd teams on trips to Europe, and has been inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in both Holland and Italy, after leading both teams to European Baseball Championships as the head coach. He was the first American to run baseball clinics in the People's Republic of China in 1980, and coached numerous US national and international all-star teams in tournaments and competitions throughout the world.
In 1981, he was inducted into the American Baseball Coaches Association Hall of Fame, and in 2000, the organization selected Arce as its recipient of the Lefty Gomez Award, its highest honor, presented to an individual who has contributed significantly to the game of baseball.
Perhaps an even more significant legacy that he left behind at CMS, besides his baseball successes, was overseeing the addition of women's sports as athletic director in 1976. The success of the Athenas in the 45 years of representing CMS all began with the immediate inclusion of women's sports into the athletics fold, once Claremont Men's College became co-ed.
Arce wouldn't take all of the family credit for the birth of the Athenas himself, though. Nancy and Bill had many shared values. Nancy taught special education and became very involved in the lives of students as the head of several different Parent Teacher Associations in the Claremont Unified School District. Nancy also believed that women should have the same opportunities as men did to compete in sports, and her husband immediately took up that mantle when CMC began admitting women in 1976, adding seven women's sports in just one year's time.
As he was entering his final year as AD, the CMS women's swimming and diving program sent several swimmers to the 1982 NCAA Division III Championships, which was the first year that the NCAA sponsored championships in women's sports (previously they competed under a separate umbrella under the AIAW). The Athenas earned a top-20 finish, led by All-American Brett Eppich. The women's cross country team followed by qualifying for nationals as a team in 1984, and women's volleyball earned its first NCAA bid in 1985 after a 24-win season, as the Athenas were off and running with adding to the success of CMS, as Arce handed over the athletic director reins to John Zinda.
Arce passed away in 2016 at the age of 90, but he would have especially proud of the Year of the Athena in 2017-18, when women's athletics produced three national championships and a fourth-place finish in one academic year, a year when the ripples of Arce's legacy of women's sports expansion became a tsunami.
"He established a philosophy that I think has carried through in all of my time here in that the student is the priority and education is what we are doing," said current head women's golf coach Jodie Burton, one of the three CMS women's coaches to win a national title that year.
So significant was Arce's legacy at CMS that in 2014, many friends, colleagues, alumni, and former student-athletes joined together and nominated him for the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
When a hiring decision turns out to be successful, a common colloquial term is to call it a "home run hire." Perhaps that term has never been more accurate than when describing the decision to bring Bill Arce on board to lead a new athletic department at CMC.
