Feet First

For nearly 75 minutes, Ron Hunter has been talking - virtually non-stop, much like his basketball teams always run and shoot the three or dunk, the shot clock be damned. He talks about his likes: Moving fast. His electric toothbrush. And shoes, of course, basketball and otherwise.

He talks about his dislikes: Negativity. The threat of that shot clock expiring ("I've never had a shot clock go off in 17 years!"). And the inevitability of becoming "Shoeless Ron Hunter." No, not of coaching a game in his bare feet, which Hunter has eagerly done once a year since 2008. Rather, of running out of shoes yet again on a mission for the humanitarian organization Samaritan's Feet - whether it is distributing thousands of shoes to impoverished children in Peru, South Africa, Costa Rica or, come June, Nigeria.

"There are just so many kids," Hunter says. "We never have enough shoes. Never." And he shakes his head in dismay.

'Everything I do is up-tempo'

On this first Thursday in April, however, Hunter is in an exceptionally upbeat mood. The new Georgia State men's basketball coach is sitting in his office, smiling. "I had a normal morning today," he says. "I got my car and my electric toothbrush."

A friend had driven his truck down from Indianapolis, where Hunter was head coach at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) for 17 seasons before he was introduced as head coach at Georgia State March 21. It's hard to say what pleases him more: having his vehicle, or his electric toothbrush.

"Everything I do is up-tempo," Hunter says. "When I get up in the morning and brush my teeth, it's up-tempo. I've got the little fast thing, the electric toothbrush. I can't use the regular one. It's too slow."

And here's the icing on the cake: it's April 7. "Today is my birthday," beams Hunter, now 47. "I love birthday cakes. White icing. White cake, with something written on it."

And not necessarily "Happy Birthday." "Sometimes, I go and buy a birthday cake, even when it's not my birthday," Hunter says. "Sometimes, I leave messages for my kids on the cake." These funny or inspirational messages from this paternal, eternal optimist go to his daughter, Jasmine, now in medical school, and his son, R.J., a junior in high school and a 6-foot-6 shooting guard. R.J. currently has offers on the table to play for Wake Forest and Cincinnati among others, but Hunter hopes "he'll come play for his dad."

"My kids will look at the cake, and look at me like, 'Daaaad...," Hunter says, smiling.

Dad can't help himself. He's always been like that. Amy Hunter understands. They met as undergrads at the University Miami of Ohio. Amy is an elementary school guidance counselor in Indianapolis. They'll celebrate their 25th wedding anniversary in June.

'I want to be here'

The little inner-city boy has come a long way from the West Side of Dayton, Ohio, where his childhood pals included best friend Ron Harper, a teammate at Miami who later won five NBA titles with the Bulls and the Lakers, and Keith Byars, an All-American running back at Ohio State who played a dozen years in the NFL. Having successful friends never shook Hunter's confidence in his own abilities.

"My mother always says, 'If you don't believe, no one else is going to believe it,'" says Hunter. As for communicating, "I never had trouble talking. If I wasn't in coaching, I was going to be on television."

After his freshman year at Miami, Hunter came home that summer and coached a Little League team in Dayton. "And that's when I knew I wanted to coach," he says. "It excited me. Even in wintertime, I couldn't wait for summer for baseball to come around."

After six seasons as an assistant at Wisconsin-Milwaukee from 1987-93, and one at his alma mater, Hunter got the head coaching job at IUPUI. "If I can sell kids on IUPUI, I can sell kids on anything," says Hunter, who in 17 years took that program from NAIA status to a Division I independent to the Summit League.

"The glass is always half-full," Hunter says. "I will not have people around me who are negative, that won't believe. We do not use the words 'can't' and 'never' in this program."

In his first meeting with Georgia State's high-energy athletics director, Cheryl Levick, Hunter knew he'd found a kindred spirit. "We're like two little tornadoes running around," he says. "And I love President [Mark] Becker's vision" to position Georgia State as one of the nation's premier urban universities.

 "The most important thing I want people to know is that I want to be here," Hunter said. "I'm not an assistant [using] this as a stepping stone. I'm a head coach, and I had a great situation. I want people to know that this is a great situation."

 

'The Vision'

First, he will court the student body to come out and support the team. "It has to start with the students," Hunter says. "We've got to get the people inside the house excited before we can get the people outside the house excited.

"In an urban situation, you've got to create a vibe," he continues. "I've been there. I did that at Wisconsin-Milwaukee, with local kids. In Indianapolis, with George Hill [the former IUPUI star now playing for the San Antonio Spurs]. We're going to do the same thing here."

He'll coach as he always has: his players will run and press, press and run while their coach prowls the sideline, stomping the foot he once fractured in a game from bringing it down too hard.

"I've been down this road before," Hunter says. "I've already coached the first seven games in my head. I know how it's going to play out - not from the players' standpoint, the coach's standpoint. Even without knowing who we're going to play. Doesn't matter.

"It's 'The Vision,'" Hunter says. "How we're going to play, going to look, how I want the game to go, how I dictate the game. I mean, the entire game. What people are going to say when we walk out in the arena here and on the road. What I'm going to say in the first media timeout as the head coach at Georgia State."

Hunter fully intends to upgrade Georgia State to the Colonial Athletic Association penthouse - this despite the fact that the CAA, one of the toughest mid-major conferences in the country, sent three teams to the NCAA Tournament last season with Virginia Commonwealth reaching the Final Four.

One more thing Hunter insists on: "It's important to me that the GSU community embraces Samaritan's Feet."

 

'There are never enough shoes'

Samaritan's Feet is the Charlotte, N.C.-based charitable organization that Hunter has embraced since 2008. Its mission: to collect and distribute millions of pairs of shoes to poor children around the world.

Growing up, Hunter always had a pair of Converse sneakers to wear. He also attended a Catholic grammar school and high school, which he says instilled in him a sense of discipline and compassion for others.

In November of 2007, Hunter was approached by representatives of Samaritan's Feet, including a friend named Todd Melloh. They were hoping to bring attention to the charity's goal of providing shoes to shoeless children. "We need a coach who will go barefoot in a game," Melloh said.

"Yeah," Hunter remembers saying enthusiastically. "Who can we get?" Then it dawned on him. "They were looking at me."

On Jan. 24, 2008, Hunter took off his size 13-1/2 shoes and socks and worked the sideline barefoot during a home game with Oakland University. He chose that date because it was the game closest to the birthday of his childhood hero, Martin Luther King Jr. Many other coaches worked barefoot, too, and thousands upon thousands of shoes were donated to Samaritan's Feet. Every season since, Hunter has gone shoeless for a game.

In the summer of '08, Hunter took his team to Peru to play a series of exhibition games. He also brought along thousands of pairs of children's shoes. After loading up an old bus in the capital of Lima and driving "out to the middle of nowhere," Hunter, his players and others began handing out the donated shoes. First they washed the children's feet, then slipped on the socks and shoes. For many children, those were the first socks and shoes they'd ever worn.

Hunter will never forget one little girl, a 6-year-old who was living in a home for abused children. "She was crying," he says. "She was scared of the process. She'd never had socks before, and now I was washing her feet."

To calm the girl, Hunter picked her up. "I gave her a sucker," he remembers. A lollipop. "And then she put the sucker in my mouth." They both smiled.

"I always wonder, whatever happened to that little girl?" he asks now. "I even had people calling me, wanting to adopt her."

When the group ran out of shoes to distribute that day, as they invariably do, Hunter says, the people started shaking the bus.  Many of them, including mothers holding babies and young children, had stood in line for four hours. Hunter even took off his oversized shoes and gave them to a kid. "But we just didn't have enough," he remembers.

The same thing happened last summer in South Africa and will probably happen again this June in Nigeria. "The hardest part to me is the trip home," Hunter says. "I'm always drained. I see the poverty there. We go to a village and..." He twirls his index finger around in a circle. "There's a long line of children and there's never enough shoes.

"What we were giving them was hope," he says. "The first time you see the look in a child's eyes when you give them shoes and a pair of socks, it's incredible."

Hope - it's what Ron Hunter brings to Georgia State where, in brogans or barefoot, he'll stand and stomp and coach 'em up for the full 40 minutes.

"I wear out the court during games," Hunter says. "The sideline at Georgia State, it may not say, 'Ron Hunter Court.'" (Indeed, the court is already named for Charles "Lefty" Driesell, the former Panthers coach and College Basketball Hall of Famer.)

"But," Hunter says, "I will leave my imprint there."

In many ways.

Jack Wilkinson is a freelance writer in Atlanta.