Graduate Tom Suiter featured in North Carolina magazine

Tom Suiter, who began a 45-year sports broadcasting career with WRAL-TV in Raleigh, N.C., just after his Erskine College commencement in 1971, was interviewed by Thad Mumau for the August issue of OutreachNC magazine.

In the interview, Suiter, known for making “Football Friday” and the “Extra Effort Award” part of high school athletics coverage, explains that at Erskine, “My freshman year, I played for the basketball team as a walk-on,” and adds, “After realizing I wasn’t as good as I thought I was, I worked in the sports information office.”

Asked about the OutreachNC interview, Richard Haldeman, Erskine’s public relations director for many years and Suiter’s supervisor when he was a student assistant, recalled that the men’s basketball team in Suiter’s time included such standouts as Skip Goley ’71.

Haldeman said he remembers Suiter well. “I depended on student assistants in those days and I had some really good ones, including Tommy Suiter,” he said.

“He worked in the PR office, helping out especially with sports, from about 1968 to 1971. He got to travel with the team, call in the scores, and so on. He had both a knowledge of sports and a love of sports, especially basketball. And he also had that innate talent for conversation that would serve him well in broadcasting.”

Read the interview here.