Chair volleyball was heating up, local quilters were laying out their fabric and members of an Alzheimer’s support group were filing in for a meeting as Susan Sellers triumphantly announced the good news.

Out of 163 senior centers in North Carolina, Hamlet Senior Center was re-certified by the state as one of 66 “Senior Centers of Excellence” on Wednesday. According to Sellers, the director, it is the only center in the Lumber River Region that can claim that title.

“Susan is awesome,” said Louise Ledbetter, a volunteer with the center’s meal program. “She works all the time. We just about have to sit on her to make her stop.”

State and regional officials said they were impressed with Sellers’s track record of delivering the services local seniors need - and carefully documenting her work.

“You do a great job here,” said Judy Smith of the North Carolina Division of Aging and Adult Services, the department that issues the certification.

One requirement for the Excellence title is a weekly schedule that includes 15 activities.

“This center provides 18 weekly activities, and three times the quarterly number of special activities that we require,” said Margaret Morse of the center for Aging Research and Education Services (CARES) at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. “That’s pretty amazing for a one-person show.”

Sellers hopes that part will change.

“When I started out we were so small, and now we’ve grown into a Center of Excellence,” said Sellers. “My hope is for the city to hire someone to take my place when I retire - someone that I can mold and train.”

Certification ensures that the center will receive three times the standard allotment of state funding.

“I cannot say enough about the countless hours that Mrs. Sellers has put into the Hamlet Senior Center,” said Hamlet City Manager Marchell Adams David. “Her efforts are to be applauded as she has truly created and continues to maintain a ‘Center of Excellence.’ Our center is second to none in what we offer our community.”

Sellers said certifying officials were impressed by center initiatives like Operation Sweet Tooth and the Family care Support Group. They also liked how members had opportunities to get involved in shaping government policies that impact seniors - citing member Ruth Watkins’s involvement in the Senior Tarheel Legislature as an example.

State Representative Melanie Wade Goodwin said she was delighted to hear the news.

“That is wonderful,” exclaimed Goodwin. “Because the Hamlet Senior Center is such an incredible resource.”