How do you measure Bob Stoppert’s success as a high school coach?
Is it the hundreds of victories and 20-plus championships he won in football, basketball and baseball over a 30-year
career at Midland High?
Is it all the players he sent on to college and professional careers — guys like major league pitchers Larry Jaster and
Jim Kern, NFL assistants Howard Mudd and Dave Arnold, and current New York Mets manager Terry Collins?
Maybe it’s the seven halls of fame that have inducted him over the last four decades.
Of course, it’s all of the above and more.
Stoppert’s latest induction is in this year’s 37th class of the Greater Flint Area Sports Hall of Fame and follows
enshrinements by the Michigan High School Coaches Association (1973), Michigan High School Football Coaches
Association (1983), Albion College (1989), Michigan High School Baseball Coaches Association (1989), Midland County
Sports (1990) and Midland High School (2015) halls of fame. Those last two inductions were as a charter member.
A Flint native who died in 2003, Stoppert is the first GFASHOF inductee chosen by the newly unveiled Veterans
Committee, which considers individuals 65 and older whose nomination forms have been in the pool at least 15 years.
“We just felt there were some nominees who had been in the pool a long time or been overshadowed, and we wanted
to make sure we got back to them,” said board member and committee chair Bob Root. “We have six individuals on the
selection committee, old-timers who go back a ways and know of some of the exploits of the nominees.”
