Meet Bud & Betty: Alumni couple dedicated to bleachers and teams

Hannah Petrak, editor in chief

Betty was playing on the basketball team and working in the Registrar’s office when they met.

“I liked the look of that little girl there, smiling,” Bud said.

It was not until the Junior Senior Banquet, ignoring their dates and talking only to each other, that Bud and Betty Hittenberger started their slow romance and eventually married a year after graduation in 1961.

Bud came to watch Betty play one game, when the gym was just a run-down, cramped room in one of the barracks buildings; and she scored 16 points, one shot from past the free-throw line, a feat for such a small team that did not even have uniforms.

“Now they just shoot from anywhere. That was a big deal, shooting from the free-throw line,” Betty said.

Now a legal courier and a substitute teacher, Bud and Betty never miss a Vanguard basketball game, unless it conflicts with work schedules or is too far to travel. Whether home or away, the men or the women, the Hittenbergers can be seen in matching VU t-shirts just behind the players’ bench, cheering and praying and holding hands.

 

It began when they came to the basketball games to watch their youngest son play in the pep band; and they continued to show up even after he was no longer attending Vanguard. That was 14 years ago.

Betty prays for the team throughout the game, but especially during free-throws—for the Lions to make it and for the opposing team to miss.

“I pray for them almost the whole game, for their energy, and their strength, and their strategy,” Betty said.

While Betty hunches over with hands clasped and then throws them up in praise, Bud sits next to her in his own quiet supplication.

“I mainly pray they do their best,” he said. “Sometimes the coach says, ‘Do what we practiced!’ He’s always saying that. So I pray that way, that they start doing what they practiced.”

Since the Hittenbergers have been around sports most of their lives, Betty especially feels she is living vicariously through the players as they score and miss, huddle together and pass back and forth. For both Bud and Betty, sports are more than just fleeting games or pointless practices.

“They learn tenacity, and stick to it, and practice, practice, practice. They learn so much through sports that is the same in life,” Betty said.

At a recent game against Biola Universtiy, Betty handed a fellow Vanguard fan and student an envelope full of the players’ names, instructing him to pray for each one throughout the week preceding the next game.

And Betty calls herself a prayer warrior, taking home the roster and praying for the players, even outside of the context of basketball.

Although the players have not gotten to know the incognito, yellow-shirted fans sitting directly behind them, they occasionally acknowledge and thank Bud and Betty for coming.

At a game a couple weeks ago, Betty caught a stray ball. Some teammates turned around with fists held high, instructing her to lean down and pound it, a highlight of her week.

Bud and Betty are so involved in the games that they feel the victories and losses along with the men and women on the court.

“When the boys lose by one point or three points, we know it’s so hard for them,” Bud said.

Even though Bud is not there to watch his future wife, and Betty is not with him to watch their son, the Hittenbergers will still sit in the stands. This ritual of theirs is not only a love of the game or a humdrum pastime. It is a loyalty, and they believe their prayers make a difference.

“They’re Vanguard. They’re our school,” Betty said.