Eric Stringer: A hero on & off the court

For Eric Stringer, basketball has always come naturally. Now he’s giving back to his community through refereeing the sport he loves, as well as through his “day job” on the Ayers Campus of Gadsden State Community College. Photo: Trent Penny/The Anniston Star

For Eric Stringer, basketball is more than a game; it is ingrained in his DNA along with his height and hair color.

From playing pick-up games and street ball as a young boy to becoming a stand-out player at Oxford High School in the late 1970s to a champion at Auburn University, basketball has been his life.

“Basketball is, I guess, just something God gave me the talent to do,” he said.

On the court, he became a local hero when on March 1, 1979, Stringer scored the winning basket in the four-overtime SEC Tournament game against Georgia in what is still the longest game in SEC Tournament history. Auburn defeated Georgia, 95-91.

Off the court, he became a hero for calling the shots, not making them, as a referee.

After he stopped playing college ball at Auburn University, he finished his degree the following year and began to referee the intramural games on campus.

Those intramural games led to joining the East Alabama Basketball Association in December 1982, and to his work officiating high school, junior high and recreational league games throughout this community when he came home from college.

Stringer credits the men that coached him as an influence to referee. He enjoys calling recreation league games because he views it as his way of giving back to his community and to those who worked with him as he grew up.

“When I see a kid who’s in high school … I remember when he was playing in the 10-and-under group or the 8-and-under group, and I’ve seen that kid develop all the way up.”

With his degrees in marketing and distributive education, he worked as a sales representative for Campbell’s Soup, which lasted five or six years, until he went to the 25th anniversary party of a colleague.

“He was making about $2,000 more than me, and I said, ‘Is that where you want to be 25 years from now?’”

So he went to work for himself selling insurance in Birmingham. But it didn’t work out as well as he hoped.

A former adviser from Auburn led him indirectly to his current job by calling his mother and telling her about a job at Ayers State Technical College.

“I got hired and fired the first day,” he said of his first experience with the campus.

An interim president had hired him but, through what he sees as politics, after being introduced around, given his job responsibilities and eating lunch he was told he wouldn’t be working there after all.

Later, another interim president hired him again. Eleven years later, he’s still there.

Working at Ayers gave him the ability to give back to his community and help others not only through his referee work, but in his day job as well.

He was hired as Director of Business Administrator Training. He’s also been in charge of the Continuing Education Program and helped develop, and was in charge of, the Kids College program, which allows children and teens from the community to go to athletic camps or take a few classes during the summer to see what a college campus is like.

Now he works with the Alabama Fatherhood Initiative.

“It was designed for deadbeat dads who don’t pay their child support. Now we find out that there are a lot of deadbeat moms, too. A lot of them are not simply deadbeat, they’re dead broke.”

Stringer spends his days taking dads and moms who are assigned to his program by the courts and putting them into classes at the Ayers campus of Gadsden State, allowing them to learn a new trade and get a better job.

Stringer gets his appreciation for education from his family.

Growing up in Hobson City, he and his siblings knew that it was their path to a better life.

“When you are coming out of the ’hood, education is the best way to pick yourself up. So we all knew we were going to college, we didn’t know how, but we knew we were going.”

He also learned the value of having a good religious foundation to build a life on.

“I think the church is the foundation,” said Stringer. “We can all stray here and there, but if you’ve got the church, if you’ve got Jesus as a foundation in your life, you’ll always migrate back to it.”

Working with the Fatherhood Initiative isn’t the only hat Stringer wears at Ayers. He’s also the campus’ multicultural affairs officer.

Multicultural affairs began as minority affairs, but, as Stringer is happy to note, has grown up to include everyone.

“It’s not just about minorities. Diversity is about inclusion, meaning everybody.”

That community spirit is another part of what he loves about working the local basketball games.

“For an hour and a half sometimes it doesn’t even matter what color you are. As long as you have on the same color jersey.”

As a deacon at New Hope Baptist, Hobson City, at his job with the Ayers campus of Gadsden State, every time he steps on the court to ref a game and at home with his wife, Delores, and their two children, Stringer’s life is all about that community and about giving everything he can back to it.

“Every job that I’ve ever gotten, somebody had to speak up for me, somebody had to help me along. So it’s my way of giving back. Just like the rec ball — it’s my way of giving back,” Stringer said.

Jennifer Bacchus is an intern with Score!. She is a student at Jacksonville State University and editor of The Chanticleer.