Jeff Moffitt has had two turns in the athletic spotlight, four decades apart, in different sports and for very different accomplishments.
Now an actor in independent films and commercials, Moffitt in 1984 was a Lodi High School basketball star when he set the team’s career record for points scored, with 1,159.
In 2023, Moffitt set out to run 57 races, all of the five-kilometer (3.1-mile) distance, to commemorate turning 57 on January 19. He began with a 5K on New Years’ Day, completed four Turkey Trots in late fall, and reached his personal finish line with a Dec. 16 race in Franklin Lakes.
“I channel my energy into running. I love it. I think it’s therapeutic,” said Moffitt, now 58, of Waldwick.
He is temporarily sidelined as he recovers from arthroscopic ankle surgery in January stemming from a long-ago basketball injury, but said he expects to resume running this spring.
Moffitt’s running group, North Jersey Masters, cited his 57-race accomplishment in naming him the group’s runner of the year for 2023.
“No one deserved it more than he did,” said the club’s president, Linda Ferraro, in praising Moffitt for his “work ethic, athleticism, spirit, abundant energy and genuine sportsmanship.”
Outside of running, Moffitt — previously a longtime Sears employee — is perhaps better known for his second career in acting, from commercial roles for products such as Samuel Adams beer and Purina Beneful dog food, to Star Wars: The Lesser Evil in 2015. The six-minute film, in which a pair of Jedi team up with a bounty hunter on a dangerous mission, won a Star Wars fan film award.
Moffitt, asked about upcoming acting projects, said he plays a New Jersey mob boss in The Last Mile to Paradise, scheduled for release later this year.
He is the latest New Jersey athlete to defy aging with a feat playing off the passage of time.
Paul Lawrence, a retired teacher and avid bicyclist from Hunterdon County, rode 80 kilometers per day — the equivelant of 49.2 miles — for 80 days last year, with a day off every week, culminating with his milestone 80th birthday Oct. 9.
Jon Auty, a retired lawyer from North Haledon, finished his first New York City Marathon in 40 years in 2022, at age 78, as a tribute to his late wife.
Remarkably, Moffitt is not the first member of North Jersey Masters to match their age in races.
Mark Washburne, a County College of Morris history professor known for his daily running streak dating to Dec. 31, 1989, said he ran 56 races in 2012, in conjunction with turning 56 — with the added bonus of having been born in 1956. Unlike Moffitt, Washburne, whose running streak reached 12,464 days on Tuesday, completed races of varying length, including the Boston Marathon.
“I think I was going for it near the end,” Wasburne said.
Moffitt, who was unaware of Washburne’s feat, told NJ Advance Media he didn’t start out the year intending to match his age in races. By the end of May, he had finished 18 races, a pace that would have fallen well short of 57.
Then he had, around that time, a burst of inspiration.
“By summer, I just felt it would be great to match my age. I had to really stack it up to get it done,” Moffitt said.
He did 28 races in the final four months of the year, including six in December, to reach his goal.
Moffitt, though, was running through pain. He broke his ankle playing basketball in 2000 and surgery was not fully successful, resulting in a doctor advising him against running — something he had been doing since the early 1990s and finishing a half-dozen marathons.
“I gave up running and restored two, 1965 Mustangs,” he said in describing her attempts to fill the void.
He resumed running, albeit at shorter distances, around five years ago.
“Little by little, I started doing more and more. I fell in love with it again,” he said.
He was born…
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