82-year-old Tucson man has been cheering on Arizona women's hoops for 36 years

Little girls dream of having a dad like Donald Nordahl.

A dad who supports their aspirations of playing basketball. This was especially true in a time not so long ago — the late 1980s, into the 1990s — when Cindy Hoskins grew up in Tucson. There weren’t the opportunities there are today for youth girls’ teams and leagues.

At 10 years old, Hoskins tried out for a boys’ team at Ott YMCA and was the only girl on the team — a shooting guard. Soon after, Nordahl bought season tickets for Arizona women’s basketball — some of the best seats in McKale Center right behind where today the UA’s ESPN+ stream team of Cindy Brunson and Joan Bonvicini sit — because he wanted his daughter to see women playing the game at a high level.

Hoskins would go on to become a ball girl for the Wildcats, go to the coach’s summer camps and eventually played on the girls team at Sahuaro High School. Her dad went to all her games.

That was 36 years ago, and Nordahl, now 82 years old, is still going to all Wildcat home games.

“I like to see players develop year to year,” Nordahl said. “I really look forward to watching all the games, this is a lot of fun.”

Back then, the price of a single ticket was $2. Now, it’s $12.

His vantage point is also different as he gave up those close-to-the-action seats for one high above the court on the east side of the arena. Around five years ago, it became too difficult to get to his previous section with his scooter (he has Parkinson’s, a lung disease and is hard of hearing). Still, he hasn’t missed one game in all those years.

Before his daughters went to college, he bought a duplex a mile away from McKale and now can be seen heading to games on his scooter towing an oxygen generator. He’s made friends with his seatmates in this newer section. He’s attended other UA sports, including football and softball, but it’s women’s basketball that really stuck with him.

This love for women’s basketball started well before his daughter played. His mom played the game in high school. This was back when there were three players on offense, three on defense and they couldn’t cross the center line. Nordahl’s mom was a center — the tallest player at 5-6 — who liked to score and was aggressive.

Nordahl didn’t play the game, those basketball genes seemed to have skipped a generation to Hoskins.

“She showed an interest in basketball at a very young age; I was very surprised,” Nordahl said.

“We walked up to the school (where they had a basketball hoop) and she couldn’t get the ball up more than 2 or 3 feet. I thought, ‘That’s the last time we’ll be here.’ But it was just the beginning.”

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Hoskins said that her friend could do it but she couldn’t and so she kept trying. In the beginning, she could only hit the net.

“She kept doing that and I saw that she was a natural shooter, she liked basketball, so she kept going,” Nordahl said.

As Nordahl turned his attention back to the court, he recalled his favorite Wildcats — across four coaches from June Olkowksi, Bonvicini, Niya Butts and now Adia Barnes.

He reeled off some of the best to don a Wildcat uniform from the late Shawntinice Polk and Dee-Dee Wheeler to Brenda Pantoja and Felecity Willis.

His memories of Barnes when she played was her quickness and how she didn’t look tall enough to play post (at 5-11, she was an undersized post in college).

When Barnes was hired to lead the program in 2016, a friend of his who played on the Arizona men’s basketball team, the late Eddie Brown, told Nordahl, “You just watch, this team is going to do something special and is going to be a special program.”

That’s what happened as Barnes put Arizona back on the map from winning the 2019 WNIT Championship to just missing out on bringing home the NCAA trophy in 2021, losing by one point to Stanford in the title game.

In the midst of all of this, the Wildcats have brought many who developed into high-performing players. There are now eight Wildcats from the Barnes era playing basketball professionally (Aari McDonald, Trinity Baptiste, Cate Reese, Jade Loville, Shania Pellington, Bendu Yeaney, Esmery Martinez and Helena Pueyo.) Two others retired over the last 18 months or so (Sam Thomas and Dominique McBryde).

Those players, the ones who developed, are the ones that Nordahl kept coming back to.

He really isn’t a fan of all the moves in the extra transfer portal or paying of players. He saw the other path work over three decades and enjoys watching the day-to-day growth of these athletes.

One who stood out was Pueyo — who stayed in Tucson for all five years. Last spring, Pueyo took over all aspects of the game from setting up her teammates, scoring herself, playing lockdown defense, as well as becoming UA’s career steals leader.

“She didn’t start shooting until she was a senior and she had to,” Nordahl said. “She was a very unselfish player and I like that.”