While not an unknown position to some, the official scorer plays an obscure, yet integral, role in every basketball game. The scorer impacts each game, sometimes decisively, not with a basketball, clipboard, or a whistle, but with pencil and paper. 

For example, the scoreboard may show a player with five fouls. Coaches, players, and referees may recall five fouls, fans may scream about the same but no player exits the game with five fouls until the official scorer says so. The game score, player and team fouls, timeouts, and possession indicator are his responsibilities. He must communicate the information to the scoreboard operator, statisticians, and announcer to make sure everyone has the correct information.

For the past 20 years at The Master's College, Phil Ross has handled his position as official scorer for the men's and women's basketball games with integrity, accuracy, and professionalism. Whether it's writing in the team line-ups, recording points, fouls, and timeouts or conversing with referees and coaches, Ross is always on the ball.

A numbers junkie from his youth, Ross was the varsity statistician for his first two years of high school before playing as a senior. He attended UCLA during the John Wooden and Lew Alcindor (now Kareem Abdul-Jabbar) years and played intramural and church basketball. With a love for the game, Ross has also coached at various levels.

He became acquainted with Los Angeles Baptist College when he started dating Debi Thornton, a graduate of the college. Following their marriage in January of 1975, Debi worked as the athletic department secretary for Pete Reese and shared the responsibilities of basketball statistics and scorekeeping with her husband during 1975-76 and 1976-77 seasons.

In December of 1989, Ross became the college's controller and resumed his responsibilities as official scorer the following season. In addition to being the official scorer at every home game, Ross has also traveled to many away games for both teams.