Local man spends lifetime donating time to local sports

Steady, committed, loyal, unfaltering; these words all have similar meanings in that they describe a devotion to something that endures over time. Those words aptly apply to James Hargett and sports officiating.

Hargett graduated from Linden High School in 1958. He had played both football and baseball during his four years of high school. Hargett was the starting running back for the varsity football team from his sophomore year until he graduated as a senior.

Upon graduation, he earned a scholarship to play running back for the Texarkana Junior College Bulldogs. Hargett played two years as a running back from 1959 to 1960.

While attending Texarkana College, Hargett was first introduced to sports officiating. Coach Thompson, who was his football coach at Texarkana College, sent him and another player to support junior high school teams in the Texarkana area who needed basketball officials.

He officiated basketball games during both seasons before leaving the area to attend college. Hargett returned to Cass County in 1962 and resumed officiating by joining the Mt. Pleasant Chapter of sports officials where he officiated football, baseball and basketball.

He continued officiating all three sports until 1966 when he was drafted into the U.S. Army. Hargett reported to Fort Polk in Louisiana for boot camp and was later trained an assigned to a 105 mm howitzer artillery unit.

His unit was deployed to Tan An, a small city located in the Mekong Delta some thirty miles from Saigon. He was in Tan An from 1966 to 1967 and during that time, his unit was called upon to fire on enemy forces.

Hargett completed his tour of duty and returned to Fort Sill, Oklahoma where he was stationed until he completed his military service and was Honorably Discharged in 1968.

After returning to northeast Texas, Hargett worked for the Cass County Highway Department and resumed his sports officiating career officiating football, baseball and basketball.

In those days, football officiating crews worked four men crews with the exclusion of a Back Judge. He principally worked as a Line Judge whose primary responsibility was for passes and punts downfield beyond the line of scrimmage.

In 1970, Hargett joined the Texarkana sports official’s association officiating football and baseball in both Texas and Arkansas. Over the next 40 years, he worked on crews for referee Tommy Tubbs in Arkansas and in Texas on crews under referees Cary Rochelle, Jeff Norwood, Rick Meyers, Ted Glazener and Ronnie Kulak.

Hargett continued officiating baseball until retiring in 2015 and continued officiating on a Friday night football crew until 2019.

He has continued officiating football on Thursday nights doing both junior high and junior varsity games, and this year will continue to support northeast Texas kids by continuing to officiate on Thursday nights.

If there is another word to describe Hargett it would be dedicated. The dictionary defines dedication as the quality of being devoted to a task or more importantly, a purpose.

Since 1959, with the exception of a year away at other colleges and two years in military service, Hargett has given back to his community in northeast Texas through service to its school kids.

If you do the math, Hargett has supported kids for 59 years. You read correctly, 59 years.

During that time the U.S. has fought four overseas wars, including the one in which Hargett fought, has had 13 presidents spanning from President Eisenhower to President Biden, gone from rotary land line telephones to cellular telephones and internet service, from black and white cathode ray tube televisions to OLED and LCD flat screens and curved screen televisions.

Football officiating crews have gone from four officials to five and seven man crews now standard.

The one thing that has remained constant in those 59 years however, is the desire to give back to the children. To pay forward the service that oth ers before gave to us when we were children playing sports.

From the time that Hargett began officiating football as part of an organization in 1962 through this past year, a general calculation would show that he has officiated close to 1,800 football games and no telling how many baseball and basketball games.

At a time when there is a shortage of officials and in particular, young officials, or when we have to have two men officiate games on Thursday night because we have a shortage of personnel, last year at the age of 81, James Hargett was on the field each Thursday night in Linden, Texas supporting the kids of his local school.

That ladies and gentlemen is dedicated personified.