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Monday, September 22, 2008
Where Are They Now?
Raleigh Durham, NC
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Tommy Hunt: An Official's Official Extraordinaire
If you ask Tommy Hunt, the most important thing about sports is the life lessons it teaches you. “You learn things like sportsmanship and how to be an example, how to follow the rules”. And for over 30 years, enforcing the rules on the field was where you could find Tommy Hunt.
At Durham High School he played on the State Championship football team of 1950 and ran track, where, as he put it, “My claim to fame was twice I lost the mile to Jim Beatty, the guy that later would break the indoor four minute mile”.
After high school, he went to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where he worked his way through school and began to get involved in officiating, primarily in Little League and High School Football. His studies were interrupted by a stint in the Army 82nd Airborne Division, after which he finished his degree at Chapel Hill in Business Administration.
In the early 70's he began officiating college football games for the Atlantic Coast Conference where, between 1972 and 1999 he would work 250 Division 1 football games, including 10 bowl games. In 1999, he joined the ACC as Coordinator of ACC Football Officials, where he served for eight years assigning officials to games until his retirement in 2007. Over the course of 33 year career, he racked up an impressive list of honors, including serving as President of the Atlantic Coast Conference Football Association, receiving the Commissioner's Award from the Atlantic Coast Conference and being inducted into the North Carolina High School Athletic Association Hall of Fame.
Hunt has been a lifelong resident of Durham, where he worked in the insurance industry for over 30 years. Now that he is retired, you might think he plans on taking it easy, but he shows no signs of letting up. He is passionate about collecting information about Durham sports history, with information on teams and games going back to 1920. He hasn't given up his interest in football, either. Recently he began scouting for the National Football League, watching college and high school games to research people who apply to be officials in the NFL.
Sports run in his family, with his two grandchildren, ages 9 and 6, involved in flag football, little league baseball and soccer. He is glad they are playing. “Sports teaches you so much, if you are willing to learn aggressively”, he says. However, the biggest thing he wants his grandchildren to get out of sports is that it is OK to have fun and not take yourself too seriously. “After all” he says, “you are playing a game.”
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