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Sports

Home is Where the Heart is for Trainer Hur

The Fort Lee's athletic trainer's road to the high school began there too.

Trainer Tom Hur is at every Fort Lee home game and most sports practices. He has been described as unselfish, humble and soft-spoken, but few actually know about Hur’s past as a former Bridgemen basketball player, his journey to becoming an athletic trainer or how he ended up back at the school he considered “home.”

Hur started attending high school in Fort Lee when he was a freshman in 1991 and over the next few years would become a three-sport star in his own right.

By catching footballs as a tight end in the fall, scoring baskets in the winter and throwing the discus for the spring track team, Hur was playing a sport in every season for Fort Lee.

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It was a way for the sports fan to stay busy, but he was also very good at the games he enjoyed, despite calling himself “very average.”

Hur was the second highest scoring player on the boys' basketball team at the time and was named  a first-team All-League athlete. Along with Austin Mallis, who averaged roughly 30 points per game, the duo helped the Bridgemen finish within one game of a league championship, and it was Hur who left quite an impression with head coach John Ziemba.

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“He was a very good player,” Ziemba said of his former center at the time. “Teams threw every defense at the kid Mallis, but the reason we were good is [because] Tommy was giving us 14 points per game [and] being the main rebounder. He was exactly the same way he is now – quiet and never looking to grab attention.”   

But he grabbed the attention of the long-time Bridgemen coach during his time at Fort Lee, so much so, that when the school was left in the unusual situation of needing a trainer mid-season, Ziemba immediately brought up "Tommy’s" name for the position.

“Everybody loves to come home and this is home for him,” said Fort Lee Athletic Director Pat Ambrosio.”I got in touch with [Tom], we interviewed, talked for awhile and hit it off immediately.”

Being familiar with the coaching staffs as a former athlete, and being a Fort Lee product himself, Hur found himself accepting the offer to return to the program.

“It was interesting coming back,” Tom Hur said about being back at FLHS. “I hadn’t been back to Fort Lee High School in a while so just coming back, seeing some of the coaches and teachers that I had, [and] walking in the gym brought back memories.”

So in January of 2008, Hur was back in the gym, on the sidelines and out on the fields that he played on back in the early 1990s as a Bridgemen himself.

But Hur worked hard to even be presented with an opportunity to arrive back at his alma mater.

After graduating from Fort Lee High School in 1995, Hur attended Rutgers and majored in exercise science. It was something that he had an extreme interest in since early in his youth and wanted to pursue as he got older.

“When I was in high school, playing sports and having an interest in sports medicine, I always wanted to do something with this field,” Fort Lee’s trainer said looking back. “I just thought athletic training is a good mix of a sports environment always and I’m a big sports fan, and then you’re in a field where you can obviously help people…it seemed like a natural fit for me.”

Hur graduated from Rutgers, moved on to Montclair State, where he continued to take the steps needed to further pursue his dream. There, Hur worked as an intern with the New York Giants, a team he grew up following, and actually helped the players once a week as part of his training.

“How often do you get to stand on the sideline or travel with the team on their plane? You don’t just get chances like that,” Hur said of his experiences with the Giants.

After finishing his internship and education at Montclair State, Hur accepted a position as an Athletic Trainer at Morristown-Beard High School, where he would spend the first five years of his career. Hur described it as a great experience, but after a random run-in with coach Ziemba at a Fairleigh Dickinson workout, the two got re-acquainted. Soon after that, Fort Lee’s trainer left in the middle of a season, and Ziemba pushed for his former player and friend to return.

So Hur traded in the 50-minute commute every day to Morristown for the shorter 15-minute drive to his former high school and current workplace, where he loves what he does.

“Being able to help the athletes back from an injury is the most rewarding [part of the job],” Hur said of the position.

“He is a very good diagnostician,” said Ambrosio. “Because he is a good athlete, he knows when somebody is hurt, when somebody is really hurt, and when somebody is full of bologna.”

In addition to being an athlete and trainer, Hur also serves in a number of other roles for the Fort Lee staff. He can be seen before games making sure that the sound equipment is working properly, helping Ambrosio with the game day staff and even serves like an extension of the coaching staff.  

“He’s like another coach there,” Ziemba said. “It’s good to have someone that you really trust and plus he’s good at his job.”

When he isn’t working countless hours at the high school, Hur enjoys being with his wife Annie and two children, Joshua, 4, and one-year old Matthew.

“He is a very unselfish person,” Ambrosio added. “You always want to surround yourself with people that care about everybody else before they care about themselves.”

So with the blessing of administration, coaches, players, friends and family, Tom Hur has found a home at his former high school and says “as long as Fort Lee would want me, I think I’d like to stay.”

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