Grey Alphin has always had an interest in sports. Growing up in the Roanoke, Va. area, Alphin was a successful baseball player throughout high school, earning a scholarship to play at Radford University where he was on the team for a year and a half. This background in sports and a desire to find a job he would be passionate about is what brought Alphin to Wilmington, leading him to his current occupation as the director of event operations at UNCW.

“What I do mainly is I attend all of our sporting events and there’s a variety of things I do there from meeting the umpires and refs and making sure they have a place to change and somewhere set up for them,” Alphin said. “I help schedule practice times for the visiting team. I help set up the game crew for each game. There’s a bunch of things that go into what I do.”

Alphin is the coordinator for all ticketed sporting events, which means that he does a lot of behind-the-scenes work for sports at UNCW. He makes sure officiating crews have everything they need, helps campus police set up parking, and makes sure visiting teams are accommodated in the best way possible, among other things.

While he played baseball for the Highlanders at Radford, Alphin did not graduate there. Instead, he left school after a year and a half to “mature and get in the right mindset.”

“Between leaving Radford and moving here, I worked jobs that were hard and not enjoyable as a reminder that I need to go back to school, because I knew if I didn’t, I’d be stuck in those types of jobs for a long time,” he said.

After taking three years off from school to work odd jobs, Alphin moved to Wilmington where he received his associate’s degree from Cape Fear Community College before earning his bachelor’s in political science from UNCW. Although he did not major in anything sports-related, Alphin believes his background as a baseball player helped him get his job today.

“I think that certainly helped me get a foot in the door for the job,” he said. “Pat (Howey, UNCW deputy athletic director) knew I had been around athletics and had a desire to work in the field.”

While Alphin works mainly with sports, he is also periodically stationed at other events on campus, such as the Azalea Festival this year and last, where he got to meet the artists that performed. His most memorable event comes from an event not related to the sports department.

“Last summer we had a film crew in Hanover Hall for a K-Swiss commercial shoot and the actor Danny McBride from ‘Eastbound & Down’ was there,” said Alphin. “Because I’m the director of event operations and I’m here every day, the department told me to be on the set as their contact person. So I got to spend a day and a half on a commercial set just being there and watching them and how they do all the commercial things.”

This is just one of the bonuses that comes with Alphin’s title. While he does a lot of work leading up to sporting events, once the game is underway, his duties dwindle.

“I get to have a job where a large part of my week is being at sporting events,” said Alphin. “I do a lot of work the week before and days before the event, but once the game is going on, my responsibilities diminish. So the cool perk is once the game’s there, I get to enjoy the game.”

For someone who has been around sports their whole life, a career in the same field is ideal. However, it doesn’t always pan out that way. For Alphin, though, it is the case.

“I want to stay in this position as long as I need to,” said Alphin. “I don’t know why I would need to move out of it right now. My desire is not to be in this position when I retire at 60, but it’s a start. It’s a way into athletics, and it’s something I really enjoy doing.”