It’s been a little while now, but Joe Ewers can still pinpoint the exact moment he decided he wanted to be a sports official.

“I knew that I wanted to be an official in the seventh grade when my mentor, Bill Spriggs, gave me my first technical foul,” Ewers, now 58, recalls. “I was at Momence Junior High, and in seventh grade, I was a little punk that ran my mouth. He gave me a technical, which I earned.

“I’m going, ‘I can respect that, I can get behind something like that.’ ”

For almost four decades, Ewers, a 1986 Momence graduate and Bourbonnais resident, has been living that dream, in the midst of his 37th season as a basketball official after completing his 28th football season at the IHSA Class 6A state championship between Fenwick and East St. Louis.

His basketball partner, Tom Hahs, whose move to full-time NCAA Division I football freed a spot for Ewers to begin football, has been at it even longer. The 1972 Herscher graduate and Bourbonnais resident is in his 51st season as an official, his 32nd on the hardwood.

And after more than a quarter-century officiating hoops together, Ewers and Hahs will now be immortalized for their contributions to the game.

The pair is a part of this year’s Illinois Basketball Coaches Association Hall of Fame class and will be inducted together at next spring’s ceremony.

After joking about the irony of a collection of coaches voting a pair of officials into the hall, a humbled Hahs felt honored.

“I’m very honored, somewhat surprised,” Hahs said. “But it’s very cool to go in together.”

The pair can be found at basketball courts throughout Kankakee County and beyond, serving as long-term fixtures at the Kankakee Holiday Tournament. They’ve worked a total of five state basketball championships, three for Ewers and two for Hahs.

Tom Hahs and his brother, Mike, spent decades on the same football crew before Tom got the nod to go full-time at the college ranks in 1997. He worked more than 250 NCAA Division I football games, primarily in the Big Ten, Midwest Athletic and Ohio Valley Conferences, before retiring from the gridiron after 25 years.

Through more than five decades of basketball and football officiating, Tom Hahs has certainly had plenty of time to make his own name in officiating circles, but he’ll always remember where his interest began. A multi-sport athlete at Herscher, Tom would spend any days he wasn’t playing games by taking them in with his late father LaVern, who also spent more than 50 years as a local athletic official.

“I used to go with him on days that I didn’t play,” Tom Hahs said. “I knew I wanted to be an official way back when, staying close to the game.”

The pair, who are both longtime members of River Valley Christian Fellowship in Bradley and Olivet Nazarene University graduates, had been friends for quite some time before they became basketball partners. But over the last quarter century, their relationship has grown tenfold.

“You spend that much time with the same person, traveling hundreds of miles on country roads, in locker rooms, you get to know them pretty well,” Ewers said, before adding with a chuckle, “too well sometimes.”

Tom is a former administrator who spent time at several area schools, most recently the Kankakee Area Career Center upon his retirement in 2009. Ewers, a Kankakee County Probation Supervisor, is retiring in April after 35 years with the department, with plans to fill some of his free time as a substitute teacher.

When the pair becomes enshrined in the spring, their names will be the ones added to the exclusive list of the best basketball people the state has ever seen. But they both know that there are several people who allowed them to reach that success, primarily their wives, Marsha Hahs and Karen Ewers.

“I understand to achieve something of this magnitude, you can’t do it in a vacuum,” Ewers said. “You need great people around you to pull you up, and to sit you down when you need to be sat down.

“I’ve had great partners like Tom and Trent (Eshleman), great mentors in Rick Preston and Bill Spriggs. You’re only as good as your partners. And I’ve got to give credit to my wife and family for putting up with the hours of being gone.”