All-American Flunkie

Dan Magill, 89, a writer, athlete, coach, curator of the Intercollegiate Tennis Association Collegiate Tennis Hall of Fame and longtime sports information director, has spent almost his entire life in Athens and around the University of Georgia.

“I was an all-American flunkie. I used to cut the grass in Sanford Stadium,” said Magill when he spoke to a journalism class on Monday, March 15.

His earliest memories of Athens are playing sports at the Athens YMCA when it first opened when he was six-years-old and it was only the third in the country. Then, in 1931, Magill was the bat-boy for the university baseball team. Later, he won the state high school 100-yard breast stroke at Legion Pool, and went on to not only coach the university tennis team but continued his involvement with the university and became the director of sports communications.

Magill spends his time these days as the curator of the ITA Collegiate Tennis Hall of Fame, which is the only museum of its kind in the country. When he isn’t doing that he is sharing stories with students, the other people of Athens, and participating in his new favorite sport, which he says is “when they kick off in Sanford Stadium and 95,000 people are whoopin’ it up.”