When Jimmy Gisi went off to South Georgia College to play baseball after graduating from Colquitt County High, like many former Packers, he came back to Moultrie for Friday night football games at Mack Tharpe Stadium.

It was there that he would find longtime Moultrie-Colquitt County Parks and Recreation Department director Jim Buck Goff watching the games from the end zone.

And it was there that Gisi, who already had an inkling that he might want to go into recreation as an occupation, began to pick Goff’s brain about the profession he had been in for so long.

“I knew I wanted to stay in sports,” Gisi said recently. “Jim Buck helped me lead me into the field (of recreation). Jim Burrows also influenced me.

“Those two really led me on my career path.”

And that path has taken him through Bacon County, Camden County and Cobb County. And for the last five years, Gisi has held the top job in recreation in the state as the executive director of the Georgia Recreation and Park Association.

And it his long involvement in sports from his own recreation department athletics days, to playing football and baseball at Pineland and Colquitt County High to his long and successful career leading recreation programs that has led Gisi to the Colquitt County Sports Hall of Fame. Gisi will be part of the Hall of Fame’s Class of 2012 that will be inducted on Nov. 1 at the annual banquet at the high school cafeteria. This year’s inductees also will be honored on the field at Tom White Field at Mack Tharpe Stadium before the start of the following night’s Coffee-Colquitt County football game.

Gisi played recreation sports while being raised by his mother and grandmother in Doerun, where Ray and Sonny Saunders helped make sure he got to practice and James Wildes coached his baseball teams.

He remembers men such as Doyle Grantham and Scott Hart taking him under their wings and serving as father figures.

Once he got to the high school level, he had the unusual distinction of playing football for four head coaches.

He attended Pineland School his first two years, playing for John Peacock as a freshman and Bill McKinley as a freshman.

He then went to Colquitt County for his final two years, playing for Bob Griffith and Bill McCall.

Gisi was an all-region selection at guard as a senior, but he was perhaps a better baseball player and was on the first Jerry Croft-coached team to win 20 games, posting a 20-7 record in 1982.

During his two seasons at Colquitt County, he caught such Packer pitchers as Dennis Powell, Keith Todd, Barry Bell, Keith Croft, Brian Clark and Greg Studdard.

He also played American Legion baseball for Post 243 under coaches Ed Creech and Bobby Bennett.

Gisi’s baseball talents led him to South Georgia College where he played two years and also developed his desire to go into recreation as a profession.

After being encouraged by Walter Huckaby and Roger Johnson and helping out at the recreation department in Douglas, he went from South Georgia College to the University of Georgia, where he got his degree in recreation and leisure services. He also has earned a master’s degree from Valdosta State in public administration.

Gisi’s first job was as athletic coordinator in Camden County.

After just six months there, he was named director of the recreation department in Alma in Bacon County, his wife’s home town.

After a year, he returned to Camden County as the head of its growing recreation department.

After eight years in Kingsland, he was offered the job in recreation department in Cobb County.

It was a big decision for a South Georgia boy.

“I was thinking, ‘Do I really want to go up there and get in all that?’” he says.

After much consideration, “we packed up like the Beverly Hillbillies,” and moved to Cobb County.

He served a year as deputy director, then was named director in 1997.

Gisi has moved from the recreation department in Camden County with a $1.5 million annual budget and 15 employees to the Atlanta area department with  $25 million budget and 700 full- and part-time employees.

“It’s a huge program,” he said. “We had 12,000-13,000 kids in baseball and softball and about 16,000 in soccer.”

During the 11 years he ran the Cobb County recreation department, was active in GRPA, having served as secretary, treasurer, vice president, president-elect and president.

In 2007, as his term as president of GRPA was coming to an end, executive director Tom Martin announced he was retiring. Gisi applied for the job was selected by the Board of Trustees as the new executive director.

As he notes with a chuckle, he went from having a staff of some 700 people to a staff of one at the GRPA’s office in Conyers.

“Personnel issues went out the window,” he said. “But I got to influence state recreation rather than just Cobb County recreation.”

The Georgia Recreation and Park Association was formed in 1945 as a private, non-profit organization to support and promote the recreation and park industries within the state. It is governed by a 34-member Board of Trustees and has a membership in excess of some 1,700 individual members.

It also oversees some 200 agencies around the state, including city and county recreation departments, YMCAs, churches and boys and girls clubs.

The agencies are divided into seven districts that hold tournaments and championships in a number of sports.

The Moultrie-Colquitt County Parks and Recreation Department has long been a member of the GRPA and Gisi says he has played in a GRPA state tournament, coached in a GRPA state tournament, worked in a GRPA tournament and now is in charge of GRPA tournaments.

One of Gisi’s biggest tasks is helping agencies do as much as they used to with less money.

“We have to train them to be more creative,” he says. “They have to be magicians.

“They have to do more with less.”

Gisi commutes three days a week from his home in Cobb County to his office in Conyers and works two days at home.

His wife Angela does not have to travel near as far. She has been teaching middle school for 26 years and her classroom is just three miles away.

The Gisis oldest daughter Karoline is married to Tyler Horton and teaches second grade in Woodstock.

Youngest daughter Kristin is a junior at Georgia College and University in Milledgeville.

And Gisi is still as enthusiastic about recreation as he was when he started in the business some 25 years ago.

“I knew I’d never be a millionaire,” he says. “But there is something to be said for enjoying what you do.

“It’s still rewarding. I can’t imagine doing anything else.”