Spencer Hill is living his dream. The Vardaman native grew up loving everything about Ole Miss. Today, he serves as equipment manager for nine Rebel sports and oversees daily operations at the Tuohy Basketball Center.
“I think of growing up and seeing that Ole Miss script logo all the time as a fan. Now, as soon as I walk in the door (at work) it’s on the floor, it’s on the wall, it’s on the kick plates on the doors and it’s on my chest every day,” said Hill.
“I’m hard pressed to go into my closet and put on anything that doesn’t have Ole Miss on it. Most people would kill for that if you’re a big fan. My wife tells me I have more shoes and clothes than she does.”
“I’m getting paid to be somewhere I love, a place I’ve loved since I was a kid.”
Hill graduated from Vardaman High School in 1995 and attended Ole Miss finding work as a student equipment manager for the football team.
“I liked it a lot,” Hill said of his student job. “I’ve always loved sports and knew I wanted to be involved in it somehow and thought this would be a good avenue to stay in it by doing what I was doing.”
He sent out resumes to every SEC school as graduation approached.
“Nobody needed an equipment manager at the time, but they knew UT-Martin did and I was referred to them. They called me at my parents’ (Jamie and Charlotte Hill) house in Vardaman and asked me to come up to Martin. I had never been there, knew nothing about it.”
Hill worked there for five years until a job opened up at Ole Miss in 2005.
“As soon as they called I knew I wanted it,” Hill said. “They started to talk about pay and I said, ‘it doesn’t matter. I want the job.’”
He was working with football when he first came back to the university and his office was in the Manning Center.
“I was football every day. I still had my nine sports I ordered for, but as far as a daily thing I worked football. I was on the practice field. I traveled with them. It was all the time.”
When the Tuohy Center opened in 2009, Hill was offered the position of serving as overseer of the facility in addition to managing equipment for his nine sports.
“We had just had our first kid. Anybody that’s worked with college football knows it’s year-round, all day, here half the night, weekends. This opportunity gave me a more normal schedule. I don’t travel with any of the teams anymore. I don’t work games. I just work here, and it lets me get home with my family.”
Hill has two primary jobs now, starting with his equipment management position.
“I order everything from socks to uniforms for nine Ole Miss sports – men’s and women’s tennis, softball, soccer, volleyball, men’s and women’s golf, men’s and women’s basketball,” he said.
“We are a Nike school, so everything is through them. They give us a website that we log into and order everything,” he said.
“That’s my favorite thing. I really enjoy working on the uniforms,” said Hill. “I get to get in there and play around with colors, logos and pick all the uniforms out for my sports.”
The significance of that is not lost on Hill.
“That’s what people see. When they see Ole Miss men’s basketball on the court and on television, that’s what they see. They don’t see the red shorts and t-shirts they’re working out in. Their vision of Ole Miss basketball is that uniform we designed. That’s a lot of fun.”
Hill’s other role is managing the basketball center which is state of the art.
He helps organize schedules for the basketball teams and the other sports and ensuring the building is set up exactly as each sport needs it.
“Everything in the building is computerized, down to the lights in the gym,” Hill said. “I have to program when they are to come on and when to go off. It’s pretty neat when people see the technology we’re using here. They think you just flip a switch. We do it all on computer.”
He described his typical day as starting with lots of email, phone calls and correspondence with director of operations for each sport setting up schedules and checking on any needs.
“With nine sports you never know day-to-day, there’s always something coming up,” Hill said.
His busiest time of year is October and November when they’re ordering everything for every sport for the following year, and then June through August when it all starts arriving.
“It comes in by the 18-wheeler truck loads – every day, sometimes multiple times a day,” Hill said. “People don’t realize how much stuff comes through here.”
Hill, 39, commutes to work now from Bruce. He and his wife Katie, a teacher at Calhoun City Elementary, and their children – Levi, 6, and Cooper, 4 – live in the former Mike Jones’ home off Hwy. 9.
As a lifelong Ole Miss fan, walking into his office every morning just off Chucky Mullins’ Drive isn’t something he takes for granted.
“I was wearing Ole Miss t-shirts and diapers. My grandfather (Charles Barnett) was a big Archie Manning fan, big Ole Miss all the way through. We all were. It’s all I’ve known. That’s what makes this job so special. I’ve been a fan of them my whole life and now I’m here every day and involved with athletics.”