In sports, the best ability is availability.

At El Camino College, CJ Arnold is one of the key factors behind making student-athletes available and successful.

Arnold grew up in Carson, where he and his two older brothers played just about every sport imaginable, but football was his main passion.

Arnold enjoys the physical nature of the sport.

“It’s legal to run around and hit people, they’d lock you up if you did that anywhere else, but football,” Arnold said jokingly.

Arnold, 44, is the athletic specialist at ECC, which means he has multiple roles in ECC athletics.

“My two main jobs are eligibility, so in-season eligibility for 400 student-athletes, and then the budget,” Arnold said.

Arnold played football as a safety at Los Angeles Harbor College and San Jose State and got his master’s in sports management.

He would later go on to coach football for 15 years mainly at the community college level.

Arnold has been the athletic specialist for ECC since Oct. 1, 2021, and came in when students were coming back to campus from the pandemic.

“It was just so different for a lot of people, you know, and then your trying to compete, and then some of the classes got moved online, so you have a online weight training class,” Arnold said.

Arnold was unsure of how instructors would manage those classes, but said that the instructors and students used objects at home to make things work.

“I had students that were lifting their chairs,” Arnold said.

One of the main reasons Arnold took the job was because he has coached at schools that did not have an athletic specialist position, making him fill in some of those roles while coaching.

This gave him the experience needed to do the job effectively.

He liked the thought of being able to help student-athletes in all sports, not just football.

At one point Arnold played LA Harbor College football and his brother played ECC football, so Arnold was also intrigued by the familiarity of the ECC area and the athletic history.

“Just knowing El Camino, knowing the area, and knowing the support that’s here, and the athletic tradition and history was kind of big,” Arnold said.

Arnold’s favorite part of the job is building connections with the athletes, especially the dual-sports athletes that he sees the most.

Arnold said the most rewarding part is not only his interactions with students, but seeing the success of the students as well.

“Just seeing them coming back and accomplishing their goals, you know, whether it’s moving on, getting a scholarship, having a good season. Whatever it may be, [a] good GPA,” Arnold said.

Rafael Guerrero, sports information director, said that Arnold’s positive energy makes him a joy to work with.

“His attitude is great, if he is in a bad mood, you can never tell. He’s always kind of got a smile on his face, so that’s pretty infectious, especially on long days when you’re here for a while,” Guerrero said.

Interim Athletic Director Abi Francisco said Arnold’s attention to details creates an efficient and productive work environment.

“He is very organized and he’s able to multi-task well and handle different facets of athletics at the same time in order to get things done,” Francisco said.

Arnold’s advice for collegiate athletes would be “focus on the now, [and] control what you can control,” especially as collegiate athletes face distractions including transferring and earning revenue from the use of their name, image and likeness.

Arnold said that being a college athlete is special, and that there are a lot of helpful experiences that come with it.

“Just live in that experience, and enjoy it while you’re at it, and learn a lot from it,” he said.