Richard Dill could run fast.

As a football player at East Gaston High School in the late 1970s, he rushed for 3,681 yards in three seasons, a county record.

As a track team member, he anchored the 400-yard relay team and made all-state.

At East Tennessee State University, he ran fast enough to go through school on a full football scholarship, and was clocked, he said, at about 9.6 for 100 yards. The track coaches noticed, and put him on that team, too, where he said he was timed at about a 4.3 for 40 yards.

And after college, his speed earned him a look-see from the Houston Oilers, for whom he tried out in 1983 before being cut in the last round.

“I guess it started in about sixth grade, when I found out I was athletic when we used to have field day over at Ida Rankin (Elementary) in Mount Holly,” he said. “I played pee-wee ball, and it just took off from there.”

Dill, whose accomplishments have placed him in the Mount Holly Sports Hall of Fame, spent his athletic career running toward goal posts, running through defenses, and running away from competitors in track.

But ask which of those was his best move – which life merit means the most – and the answer doesn’t have anything to do with a playbook and cleats.

“None of this would be possible without God. I mean, none of it,” Dill, 54, said recently from his home in Charlotte. “Giving my life to the Lord Jesus Christ was the best thing I ever did. Without that, I wouldn’t have been able to obtain my scholarship. The talent I have is God-given. He’s allowed me to enhance it, but it’s a God-given ability. You can’t teach someone to run that fast.”

Former East Gaston wrestling coach Doug Smith, who started at the school in 1978, remembers the quickness.

“I think my first year coaching there, he was one of the star running backs, then he got that full ride to ETSU,” Smith said. “He was one of the school’s first super running backs.”

A Gaston Gazette article reported that Dill’s county-record 3,681 yards remains first in school history, and his 1,646 yards in 1978 as a junior – including 296 yards against East Rutherford – were school records that lasted until 2006 and 1997, respectively.

“I really didn’t know how fast I was until they started timing me. In that era, when I played football, I was, like, 158 pounds. But when I left college, I was about 185, 190,” he said. “When you got a full ride and the football team has their own training table, their own trainers, you’re gonna put that weight on, but in the right places. Most colleges, they treat their athletes pretty good. I couldn’t have asked for any better.

“You have to keep your grades up, though. It’s a job, really. But I wouldn’t trade it for the world.”

Dill also got recruiting interest from North Carolina State, Clemson and Kansas. “But when East Tennessee came down and talked to my parents, I think my mom pretty much made the decision, and it was the right decision, looking back on it,” he said. “I went to Carolina (in Chapel Hill) on a visit, but it was like taking a little, small town Mount Holly boy and dropping him off in New York.”

It was in college that Dill met a woman named Renee, who, Dill said, “was just in love with God.”

“I started going to church with her, and I started going on a regular basis. My parents had introduced me to it, but it became easier when you had a peer who was so sold on God. It just kept growing and growing and growing.”

After sports, Dill worked as a private investigator. For the past 21 years, though, he’s been employed with United Parcel Service. He has two daughters – Alisha, a graduate of Coastal Carolina, and Desiree, who attends Norfolk State. He met his wife, Pam, at church.

Dill is one of six children – three boys, three girls – of James and Betty Dill.

To young kids today, he has these words: “Do right by your parents. Know how to control yourself. There’s always someone who will give you an opportunity to do something wrong, but that’s when your training comes in with your parents.”

To his fellow adults: “When you get to a point in your life when you can, you help somebody. God has placed people here on Earth to help someone else. We tend to get too caught up in ourselves at times. But you have to do right in this life; you have to put other people before yourself. The greatest thing in life is helping other people.”

On his induction into the Hall of Fame: “I think it’s a great honor for me, a tremendous honor, because someone thinks that much about you to put you among all those elite people.

“One other thing that really impressed me – the mayor of Mount Holly knew all about me, all this stuff, how many yards I ran. He said, ‘When I was a little boy, I used to sit in the stands and watch you.’ That just blew me away.

“I kinda felt like Michael Jordan or something…”