SPOKANE, Wash. -- Gonzaga fans all across Washington and beyond are counting down the minutes to Monday night’s national title game.
You walk around the campus and every single person has a story about how they ended up at Gonzaga. Whether it was their parents or their grandparents or this basketball team that drew them there, the whole Gonzaga family will be watching. Some people though, have been waiting for this moment a bit longer than others.
It's a school of 7,000 with incredible academics and state of the art facilities. A university now noticed by a nation with help from this basketball team. But this program started decades ago with people like Bill Schauble.
As he looked at old newspaper clippings Schauble explained how he played hoops for Gonzaga from 1946 to 1950.
“We had two players from Kansas,” he said.
This 90-year-old lifelong Bulldog now lives a mile from GU with his wife of 55 years. Schauble watched this program grow from the very beginning.
“We traveled by train. It was very scenic, so I enjoyed it, but it was very tiring too,” he said.
Progress has taken this program from trains to the title game.
“They have a wonderful team. They play as a team. They play with team concept, rather than individuals,” Schauble said. “It's very exciting to know we finally made it. All these years we got the Sweet Sixteen, the Elite Eight, and finally the Final Four and now we're right at the top.”
They never believed this moment would come.
“It's the frosting on the cake you might say,” he said.
So as the Zags take the court in Arizona, Schauble and his wife will be watching with pride for these young men and this university.
“I know that all our hearts, and our hopes, are going to be right with them, inside of each one of them, and I know they're going to be playing their best, and if they win or lose, we're proud of them no matter what,” said Schuable.