Jamie Hunt traveled all over the world competing in tennis tournaments as a juniors player.

Jamie Hunt will move over to coach at Vanderbilt to help the Commodores in ways he helped Georgia when he was a player.

He spent his past four years decked out in red and black attire contending for the Georgia men’s tennis team, winning two national championships during his career in Athens.

Now, as he enters his last semester of classes, he will soon pack up four years worth of Bulldog T-shirts to make room for his new getup featuring new colors: gold and black.

Next week, Hunt will officially be named an assistant coach for the men’s tennis team at Vanderbilt.

“I said all along I wanna [coach] in a competitive conference,” Hunt said. “I made a list of schools and Vanderbilt, I’ve always liked them, they were at the top of my list — definitely top five. So, I was extremely excited to go there.”

The bug to coach bit Hunt about a year and a half ago, and he started toying with different paths he could take upon graduating. Having been coached by one of college tennis’ all-time great coaches in Georgia’s Manuel Diaz, Hunt leaned on his mentor for advice on the best ways to break into the college coaching ranks.

“He was kind of honored [when Hunt asked for advice] because I said how much he’s helped me, him and Will [Glenn] have helped me not only with tennis but just with my life growing up,” Hunt said. “I just thought if I could do something like that and help someone like that, it’d just be so rewarding.”

Diaz suggested to Hunt to join Georgia’s coaching staff this fall as a graduate assistant for the squad and stay on staff as a volunteer coach during the season in the spring. Diaz said that would enable Hunt to finish his degree and build his coaching résumé simultaneously.

“Little did we know that late in the summer, a position at Vanderbilt University would come open,” Diaz said.

After Vanderbilt’s head coach Ian Duvenhage narrowed the pool of candidates, Hunt’s future appeared in his e-mail inbox.

“I got an e-mail from their coach asking me if I was interested in their assistant coaching job,” Hunt said. “And I said, ‘Absolutely but I still have a semester of school to finish.’”

Not wanting to wait to graduate to start down the coaching path, Hunt worked it out so he could finish his classes from Nashville, making it possible to accept the position with the Commodores.

Just three months removed from his final match as a Bulldog, Hunt carves a new route to Nashville to leave his footprint at Vanderbilt, much like he has already done in Athens at Georgia.

He takes with him qualities that Diaz said will make him “great” on his new career path.

“He’s got a radiant personality,” Diaz said “I mean, everybody likes Jamie. He just has great people skills and he’s able to communicate his message very clearly and articulately. He’s bright. I think he’s about to get some invaluable experience early on and I think he’s gonna make a great college coach.”