Volunteer of the Year – Brian Corbin

Our organization is fortunate to possess a large pool of experienced and reliable volunteers, compared to most running clubs. Each year, easily a dozen or more GWTC members contribute enough to deserve nomination for the Volunteer of the Year award.

What sets Brian Corbin apart for this year’s choice? Like many members, he is quick to volunteer at a road race, track meet, or cross-country event that he is not directly participating in. Like a moderate number of members, he has been a mainstay of assistance at the annual Turkey Trot race – overseeing the U-Haul collection of donated goods, with wife Judy Alexander. Like a handful of members, he has served as a race director (again with Judy, taking on two of the GWTC’s more significant events: the Springtime Tallahassee 10K and the 10-mile challenge). Like just a few members, he has done a long stint as a membership coordinator, serving in that “under the radar” post for most of the last decade. But like just one other club member to date – Chris Sumner – he has taken on the time-consuming, headache-inducing challenge of mastering automatic timing and scoring systems. 

For those who aren’t familiar with either the significance of these systems, or the effort required to learn them, let me explain. Along with the impressive recent increase of youth track and cross-country meets in the area came a mandate from governing organizations to use automatic, computer-based systems to time and score these meets. For Luddites like me, this mandate posed a serious challenge. But this past year, Brian came to the rescue. He immersed himself in learning the systems, essentially serving a summer-long internship at the GWTC Grand Prix Track Series meets. He honed his chops in area meets, paying some heavy dues. I specifically recall Brian going above and beyond the call of duty at a high school championship meet last year, when the elements and the equipment conspired against him. Rather than shutting down and going home at the meet’s conclusion (like the rest of us), Brian manned his post until well after midnight, staying until he was confident that all the results were perfectly correct. It’s that kind of devoted, compulsive, anal-retentive attention to detail that earns Brian Corbin the right to have his named mentioned in the same sentence with Bill Lott.

Congratulations Brian…and thanks!