Amid thousands of screaming NBA fans and towering star players, the elite eight at the scorers table play a critical role in keeping the action moving on the hardwood.
One person works the scoreboard. Another keeps the official scorebook. Two people run the game and shot clocks. And four people on the other side of the court record every basket, rebound, foul, and assist.
Nearly all eight are men.
But two AU alumnae are working to even the score, staffing the scorers table together at hundreds of basketball games, including nearly all Washington Wizards home matches. Separated by 40 years but bound by their love of hoops, Tiana Hakimzadeh and Marcy Shapiro’s relationship began as one of a rookie learning from a seasoned veteran. They’ve since become not only colleagues, but friends.
“I don’t think I’d be where I am without Marcy,” says Hakimzadeh, SOC/BA ’12, director of AU’s on-campus programs. “One of the first things she told me when I started working Wizards games was, ‘Don’t let the guys take advantage of you.’ She used to tell me that if there was ever a scoring discrepancy, not to automatically think it was an error on my end. She told me to trust myself and stand my ground.”
Both women’s paths to the pros began at AU.
Shapiro, SIS/BA ’72, has kept the official scorebook for AU’s men’s and women’s basketball teams for 37 years. She worked her first Eagles game in 1988, the year after Bender Arena opened. (When she was a student, the future home of AU basketball was just a parking lot.)
Shapiro spent her first year on the table calling out the action for a colleague who furiously tapped out the game log on a typewriter. “They didn’t have anything computerized, so that was the play-by-play that was produced for every game,” she says.
The next year, Shapiro found her niche: keeping the official book. It was a way to utilize her perfect penmanship, and the position came with a permanent front-row seat behind the possession arrow.
“When I started out, I was probably old enough to be [the players’] older sister; then it was their mother; now, it’s their grandmother,” Shapiro says. “[Players] come and go over the years and work hard on the court. When they come back to a game, a lot of times they come over to the table and say hello. That gives me a wonderful feeling. They may not know my name, but they know I’ve been there a long time.”
A 5-foot-1 former guard cut by her high school team, Hakimzadeh met Shapiro when she began working as a student manager for the AU men’s basketball team in 2008. While her male peers performed locker room tasks she couldn’t, Hakimzadeh learned to run the clock and tally statistics at practice. “If I didn’t spend four years of my college career as a student manager, there’s no way I’d be doing what I’m doing now,” Hakimzadeh says.
After graduating with a bachelor’s in broadcast journalism in 2012, Hakimzadeh moved to the AU scorers table. There, Shapiro began schooling Hakimzadeh in the often-subtle differences between collegiate men’s and women’s games, and later the NBA and WNBA. Shapiro was eager to help because “for years, I was the only woman on the table.”
“No one taught me—I didn’t have that luxury—so I learned by reading, doing, making mistakes, and learning from them,” Shapiro says. “That’s why I’m grateful for the opportunity to help make it a little easier for others.”
Mentored by Shapiro, Hakimzadeh started working contests at George Mason, George Washington, and Georgetown. When the ACC and NCAA tournaments came to DC, she began working those games too. This season, she’s keeping the scorebook at all the Hoyas’ home games.
Shapiro has been keeping the scorebook for the Washington Mystics since the WNBA franchise’s inaugural season in 1998. Nine years later, the Wizards came calling—and Shapiro’s rarely missed a game since. “It’s basically like the Supreme Court,” she says. “[You] stay for life unless somebody leaves or moves.”
Somebody did, allowing Hakimzadeh the opportunity to operate the scoreboard during a Wizards preseason game in 2017. When the club asked her to continue after a mistake-free debut, Hakimzadeh committed to learning all eight positions at the table—a rare feat that has boosted her marketability.
“We’ve got a really, really good table crew,” Shapiro says. “We know it, the team knows it, and we have a good reputation with the league and the referees.”
In 2020, Hakimzadeh is believed to have become the first woman to work in a statistician role for the Wizards. The team commemorated the event by gifting her point guard Russell Westbrook’s game-worn shoes, which she displays in a glass case on a bookshelf at home.
“That’s probably one of the coolest things I’ve ever gotten,” she says, beaming with pride.
One opportunity has led to the next for Hakimzadeh. When the 2022 FIBA World Cup men’s basketball qualifiers were held in DC, she staffed the scorers table. That led to the NBA Summer League in Las Vegas in 2023 and to Madrid a few months later for a Dallas Mavericks exhibition game.
In summer 2024, she ran the shot clock during a pair of men’s USA Basketball scrimmages in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, before the Paris Olympics, where the team won its 17th gold medal. And in November, both Hakimzadeh and Shapiro traveled to Mexico City to work the Wizards’ game against the Miami Heat.
When it comes to what’s next, Shapiro and Hakimzadeh know one thing: They’ll never pass up an open shot.
“If I wasn’t working the games, I would be at home watching them,” Hakimzadeh says. “So why wouldn’t I work them? I have the best seat in the house.”