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| Clint Haggard (middle) pictured with other members of the South Carolina Gamecock athletic training staff |
Feature
on former Raider Athletes- Where are they now?
By Dallas Bordon
Most people wish for a dream job.
While growing up, most kids dream of what they will be when they grow up. Clint
Haggard, a 1998 graduate of Madison County High School, might have dreamed of
being a professional ball player one day; dreams that most kids in sports have.
For Clint, a former Raider soccer player all four years at MCHS and football
player for the Raiders in 1994 and 1996, he is living a different kind of dream.
Not a dream of playing any type of sport, but a dream of being around the sport
of football. Haggard is the youngest Division 1 head athletic trainer in the
history of the modern NCAA and also the youngest head athletic trainer in the
history of the Southeastern Conference. He is currently the Head Athletic
Trainer for the South Carolina Gamecocks. “I’m very thankful to be one of
fourteen head athletic trainers in the SEC. This year was my 13th
season of college football and I hope that I have at least 30 or more left in
me,” Haggard said.
It was a knee injury suffered in
high school that grabbed Clint’s interest in sports medicine. “I hurt my knee
my junior year playing football and did not play my senior year. I reinjured my
knee the spring of my senior year which sparked my interest in sports
medicine,” said Haggard.
Haggard originally entered the
University of Georgia as a pre-veterinary medicine major but quickly became
interested in athletic training and sports medicine. After changing his major,
Clint worked behind the scenes for many different UGA athletic events including
football, baseball, soccer, and swimming & diving programs. “In the summer
of 2001, I was also fortunate enough to work with the Indianapolis Colts during
training camp where I got to meet many people with whom I still talk to today,”
said Haggard.
Haggard’s road to South Carolina
had many stops along the way. After graduating with a BSEd in Exercise Science
from Georgia in 2002, Clint immediately went to the University of Alabama as a
graduate assistant athletic trainer for the football team. “One of my mentors
at UGA, Ron Courson, was an assistant athletic trainer at Alabama and helped me
get my foot in the door over there,” Haggard said. Clint was at Alabama from
2002-2006, first as a graduate assistant athletic trainer, and then was hired
as an assistant athletic trainer. Haggard served at Alabama during the
Franchione, Price, and Shula era.
Clint recalls a fond memory
during his first two years with Alabama when the Tide faced the Georgia
Bulldogs. “In 2002, we played Georgia in Tuscaloosa being one of the hottest
games I have ever been part of. That was the year Billy Bennett kicked a last
minute field goal to beat us,” Haggard said. “In 2003 in Athens, Thomas Davis
blitzed off the end on consecutive plays and knocked two of our quarterbacks,
Spencer Pennington and Brodie Croyle, out of the game.”
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| Clint with his family. Wife Erin and children Brewer and Reagan |
Haggard graduated from Alabama in
2003 with a MA in Health Sciences and was promoted to assistant athletic
trainer in 2004. Rice University in Texas would be where Haggard would land his
first head athletic training position in 2006. “It was a great opportunity for
my family and though it was much different being at a small highly academic
institution, I cherish the time and the experience we had there,” said Haggard.
But for Haggard, a Georgia boy at
heart, he longed to be close to home and back in the SEC. In 2009, that
opportunity came for Haggard. “My mother had just passed away a couple of weeks
earlier and I did not tell my father that I was coming to Columbia to
interview. I had some other opportunities to go other places that didn’t work
out and I didn’t want to get my dad’s hopes up that this would so I decided
that if the interview went well and they offered me the job, I would go to
Athens and see him and if not I would just go home to Houston and not say anything,”
said Haggard. South Carolina didn’t offer the job to Haggard right at that
time, but despite his plans to return to Houston, he surprised his dad with a
visit anyway.
As most Georgia fans’ feelings
aren’t pleasant ones of the head ball coach Steve Spurrier, Clint’s dislike
towards the Gamecock coach were no different during Clint’s younger years. But
then one day in 2009, that all changed. “Imagine my surprise when he (Spurrier)
called me a few days after my interview to offer me the job!” Haggard said. “He
opened the conversation by saying he heard I was a Georgia graduate and I told
him not to hold it against me.” Haggard and Spurrier’s conversation continued
and a relationship grew almost instantly. “I’ll have to say that he is one of
the nicest people that I have ever met,” said Haggard. “He and his wife Jerri
do so much for me and for the rest of the staff that many other football
coaches and their wives do not do. He is a big family man and our families are
around the complex often.”
Haggard’s duties at South
Carolina as head athletic trainer include taking care of medical needs for the
student-athletes and staff. He is the liaison between the physicians and the
football program and coordinates the medical care for upwards of 200 people.
Haggard interacts with Coach Spurrier on a daily basis and says that between
the coach and the team’s physicians, he sometimes spends more time in
conversation with them than he does with his wife.
Clint sees a different side of
Coach Spurrier than most people see in the media. “I have been fortunate enough
to spend a lot of time away from the office with him (Spurrier) and have gotten
to know him very well,” Haggard said. “Times spent with coach gives me a different
perspective of him from the one people see in the media.”
Haggard’s spends many hours as
the Head Football Athletic Trainer. He is on call 24/7 and logs in anywhere
from 70 to 100 hours a week depending on the time of the year.
Clint married his wife Erin in
2004 and they have two children Reagan; born in 2008 in Houston and Brewer;
born in 2009 in Columbia. “My job requires many hours of work and my wife does
a great job of keeping our house and me in order,” said Haggard. “I try as much
as I can to have the kids around me at work and to leave as soon as I can to go
home to see them, but there are many days that I leave before they get up and
come home after they are asleep at night.”
As for Haggard’s loyalty to
Madison County, he quickly stated in the Gamecock’s media guide that he is from
Ila, Georgia and not Athens so that Madison County would get a bit of
publicity. “I am very happy to be able to be close to home and do what I love
doing on such a big stage,” said Haggard.
If you are a former Madison
County athlete (five years ago or longer) and would like to be featured in The
Madison County Journal, please contact Dallas Bordon at dallasb32@yahoo.com.
