If the first NCAA championship proved to be special, then Chris Hill’s second title was certainly one for the memory bank.

Throw an all-too-important No. 11 ranking into the equation, and Georgia’s 2009 Track and Field outdoor season was one that will not soon be forgotten by Hill.

Hill topped off his final campaign for the Bulldogs by tossing his way to back-to-back NCAA javelin titles, all while extending a school record and cementing his place in Georgia history.

“With the first [title] it was a nervous energy type of thing, I was just really pumped and excited with it being my first time there,” Hill said. “This time it was more business. I knew what I was capable of and what my body was capable of. So I had it all in my head – I had it won before I even went out there.”

But with all of the collegiate accolades in his rearview mirror, the junior All-American will now forego his final season of eligibility to compete professionally in the sport he dominated in college the past two seasons.

Hill plans to finish up his final two semesters of classes at McNeese State University, where he originally transferred from in 2007.

Having already signed with an agent, Hill looks forward to working out a sponsorship with Nike and competing in professional meets across Europe.

His ultimate goals in the present future are now firmly focused on his performances in the U.S. Track and Field Championships and then the World Championships in Berlin this August.

“It’s one of those things I’ve been praying about for a long time and I feel like this is where I need to be,” said Hill, who also captured his first Southestern Conference javelin title this season. “I’m a very religious guy and it has just been something that has been on my heart.”

Hill will be missed around Georgia’s Spec Towns Track next season. In the past two seasons, he has brought home two of Georgia’s 13 men’s national championships since the school’s first NCAA season back in 1936.

To put into perspective what a single member can mean to a squad, Hill scored 10 of Georgia’s total 19 points at the NCAA Championships – a difference of their 11th-place finish or a tie for the No. 25 spot.

Hill’s 10 points were never in question, as he won the event by almost 20 feet. He launched his fifth throw a distance of 268 feet, 1 inch — topping the school’s all-time mark by three inches, a record he already owned.

“I still didn’t feel like [the record throw] was absolutely my best, I feel like I got a lot more in the tank,” Hill said. “But it was nice to finish off the whole thing like that, not to win by three or four meters, but to really dominate like that.”

Even with a men’s program that appears to be on the upswing in performance and recruiting, Georgia will be hard-pressed to find another athlete like Hill.

He was the unquestioned leader and only NCAA champion of a close-knit group of throwers that earned three All-American honorees in 2009.

Finding a substitute for an NCAA champion is difficult. Replacing a two-time NCAA champ is only that much harder.

“There’s no definite right way do it, deciding whether to go all four years of college or finish up my degree earlier, which of those things is most beneficial?” Hill said. “If I’ve done everything and feel like I’ve got all that I can out of the javelin, then I’ll be content. That’s the biggest thing, I just want to be content.”