One Of Us 

Longtime Alma volunteer team physician, Dr. Ron Schlabach, retiring after 35 years

By Kevin Taylor

Alma Schools 

The best advertising is free advertising. Dr. Ron Schlabach figured that out the first time he went to an Alma Airedales’ football game. 

Thirty-five years later, he never left.

This school year will be Schlabach’s final year of volunteering for Alma Schools. 

The mild-mannered Colorado native recently retired from his practice at Baptist Health Family Clinic, the very building he first stepped foot into back in July of 1990.

“I’m going to spend time with my grandson in Texas and we’re going to be doing a lot of traveling,” Dr. Schlbach said. 

Undoubtedly, there will be plenty of story-telling, too. 

“This year, riding with him to ballgames, he told many great stories,“ Alma Athletic Director Jerrod Burns said. “The first Friday he was here (1990), he showed up for a (football) game and the whole town was here. That next week, everybody was like, ‘Hey, I saw you at the game.’ 

“He (Schlabach) said this is important here.”

“I’m no dummy.” kids Dr. Schlabach. “I thought if I was going to build a practice, I needed to be here on Friday night because everybody was looking at me. I’ve been volunteering ever since.”

A native of Pueblo, Colo, a sprawling city on the Front Range's foothills, Dr. Schlabach quickly learned the true meaning of living in a small town.

“When he moved into his first house, one of his patients said. ‘Hey, I like your red couch.’ He said, ‘How do you know I have a red cough?’ The guy told him I saw you moving in,” Burns said. “That’s small-town America.”

"I grew up in  Pueblo, Colo.; that’s where I graduated high school,” Schlabach said. “I went to Oklahoma for medical and undergraduate school, and I ended up here to do residence training in Fort Smith — that’s how I ended up in Arkansas. 

“When it came time for a job, I interviewed at different places around here, and  (Gordon) Sasser and (Bart) Sills, guys from way back when were needing a third (doctor) because their clinical was growing that fast.”

Sasser and Sills opened their facility along Hwy. 64 in 1988. By 1990, they were busting at the seams. 

“It expanded rapidly because it was a nice new building,” Dr. Schlabach said. “I finished residency in 1990 and I was interviewing with them in December of ‘89 to join them, and started in July of 1990.”

Becoming a doctor was one thing, but being seen next to hulking football players proved to be the best advertising he could have dreamed of.

“I started on July 16th, a Monday, and on Wednesday, two days later, Sasser says, ‘By the way, tomorrow night, don’t plan on going home because we do sports physicals and we’re going to need your help.’ 

“Thursday, the fourth day of my life in Alma, I was doing volunteering sports physicals for Alma School District,” Dr. Schlabach said. “Honestly, the biggest thing was, ‘Hey, when you go to the ballgame, can I come along with you, and Sasser said no problem.”

On Sept. 7, 1990, Dr. Ronald Schlabach strolled to the Airedales’ sideline for the team’s season opener against Ozark.

People took notice.

“Pueblo, where I grew up, had 125,000 people and four high schools,” Dr. Schlabach said. “I wasn’t used to a small town. We go to the football game and I look up and it looks like the whole town is here. Alma, at that time, was about 3,000 people, and I’m thinking, ‘Gosh, they’re all at the game.’

“I didn’t understand that there were people from outside the area at the game; to my naive brain, they were all at the game.”

"From the time that he got here, he just jumped in and said I want to be involved in the community and I want to be involved in the school and all of the athletic teams,” former Alma coach and athletics director Mike McSpadden said. “We didn't have to ask him to do it or beg him, he just said I want to do this.”

“When he came in and became the team doctor, that was a transition over for me, too, because he became my doctor,” former Alma coach Brooks Witherspoon said. “He has been there, on the sideline or in the stands for basketball, for a long time. He’s done a great job helping with trainers, too. He’s not afraid to help players from other teams, either.”

Like a line from the famous Hank Snow song, ‘I’ve Been Everywhere,’ Dr. Schlabach has crisscrossed the state from one corner to another. 

“He's followed our athletic teams, literally, from one corner of the state to another, year after year. From Jonesboro to Texarkana, and from Camden-Fairview to Harrison,” McSpadden said. “You just think of the countless times when there was an injury, you saw Dr. Schlabach walking out on the field. It's been such a reassuring thing for our parents to know that he was there."

Dr. Schlabach also took care of opposing players.

“I’ve had parents who came to me the next year or the next season to thank me,” Dr. Schlabach said. “We were hosting a basketball tournament here and I had a Siloam Springs mom thank me. Her son got knocked out cold … people have told me that Slim (former Alma athletic trainer Mike Blaylock) and I were running on the field before the kid hit the ground; we just knew.

“It was basketball season, a year later, and his mom came up to me and thanked me. I’ve had some other coaches approach me and thank me, too.”

"Over the years we've gotten countless phone calls from parents of players from opposing teams thanking us for his service," McSpadden said. "He's been such a fixture, game after game after game, and year after year in all of our athletic events."