Saturday, December 17, 2011

Hectic pace, history part of Campbell's new gig at HU

Keisha Campbell
 Director of Athletics
Hampton University
HAMPTON, Virginia — Hampton University athletic director Keshia Campbell has yet to settle into her office — the same office (with the same carpet) that she occupied as HU's associate athletic director for administration in 2006.

Looking around the space, crammed with trophies and plaques and shaken once every few minutes by muffled sonic booms from the weight room below, she says, "If I were to leave here today, I would grab my purse and that Germ-X," indicating a bottle of hand sanitizer on her desk. "That's it. I came in and literally just started working and just haven't let up at all."

Campbell returned to Hampton in late July, hired away from the University of Texas-Dallas, where she'd worked since 2009 as the school's director for business affairs and special projects.

A native of Bennettsville, S.C., and the 1987 valedictorian of Blenheim High who carries bottles of Blenheim spicy ginger ale in the trunk of her car to offer to the uninitiated, Campbell is the first female AD in Hampton history.

The historic stop is the latest in a life devoted to athletics for Campbell, a 2006 inductee into the South Carolina State University Athletic Hall of Fame who led the school in scoring and rebounding and was named the Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference player of the year as a senior in 1991.

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