Finding your role in an athletic department
Introductions and the first weekly Triceratops Report
In case you missed last week’s big announcement, things are a little different here at SID Sports moving forward. You see, I’m now leading the Sports Information and Media Relations department (it’s a one-man shop, but still) at Cuyahoga Community College.
This is going to be the first of the articles you can expect in the future. I’ll kick off with a blog-style post with a look inside at something I did in the last week. Then, we’ll get into the Triceratops Report where I’ll link the content I made for my teams. Finally, we’ll close with a typical block of how to follow along with my journey.
Easy, right? Let’s get into it!
In my eyes, a Sports Information Director (SID) isn’t the arbiter of what gets published, how and why. I’m not out to control everything about a department that I had no hand in until last week.
Instead, I want to learn how to tell the story of the teams that I’m covering and promoting now. The administration, like the Athletic Director, is a great place to start on what needs to be said and what the overall messaging is. But, no matter how involved an AD can be in their department, they aren’t in each program every single day.
So, my big goal for the first week of being in the position was to set up meetings with each and every head coach in the department.
To me, the coaches are the ones that are truly leading each program. They’re the ones bringing the players in. They’re the ones that set the tone and lead the team throughout offseason training, in-season practices and gamedays. At this level, they’re the ones setting schedules.
This week, my priority was to get in front of each coach and have a full and earnest conversation with them. Way back when I was a student worker at Bowling Green, taking over my first role leading media relations for swim and dive, one of my mentors pushed for that, telling me “the first thing to do is to get to know the head coach.” And that’s what I did.
Quickly, I struck up a solid working relationship with the coach. We both knew it wasn’t going to last - his program had been traditionally run by student interns and workers and I was about to embark on a different school-mandated internship the following semester - but we worked to ensure that we could provide the best coverage possible for his program.
That relationship led to multiple stories that I had to pass on to my successor, including one about a student-athlete that was overcoming major medical issues during high school to even make it to college, let alone swim.
When I once again took the lead role for a team, this time the Cross Country and Track and Field program at Eastern Michigan, I met with the entire coaching staff within my first week. We discussed things like their image and view of the program, what they liked about what my predecessor did, and what they wanted to see differently in the future. It helped guide my plans on how to cover and structure the program.
Here, at Tri-C, things are different. There is no predecessor. And this is a much longer appointment than a semester or a two-year graduate assistantship.
Armed with my handy notepad, I made appointments with the head coaches of in-season sports, prioritizing the ones that I had started covering. Over the summer, I’ll talk with the rest of the sports to form a more cohesive plan, but getting thrown into the fire means you have to come up with some compromises.
Ahead of the the first games with each team, I met with the head coaches of the baseball and softball programs. We discussed things like what’s currently on the plates for them and their staff that I can take away, such as website upkeep and reporting information.
We also discussed things like social media strategies and marketing materials, but this is a college and, as much as I’d like to just take the reins day one, there is a lot of red tape to get that access. Access that I don’t have as of yet.
But these conversations are the vital first piece of building a successful sports information department. Without knowing the programs, the teams, the coaches, the stories, how can someone effectively cover a team? It’s not possible. With those conversations completed, I now know the workflow the team has. How stats are kept. Who to go for if there needs to be any stat corrections. How to distribute those statistics. And how to distribute anything the coaching staffs need out there.
All important things for an SID to know in order to fill out the content calendar.
Here’s what I published this week:
⚾Gallaher’s big day, havoc on basepaths give Triceratops sweep of Lorain County Community College
🏃➡️Tricertops Track and Field takes 14th at Sparky Adams Invitational
Check in throughout the week at athletics.tri-c.edu, the official website of Tri-C Athletics. Follow the Triceratops on Instagram at tri_c_athletics, Facebook at Tri-C Athletics, or Twitter at TriCAthletics.
Go Triceratops!
Congratulations on taking over the sports information and media relations role at Cuyahoga Community College.
You’re already doing the most important thing by getting in front of your coaches and learning their programs. That’s where it all starts.
I learned a long time ago that if you want people to care about a team, you have to give them a reason. Box scores and stats are part of it, but stories are what stick. When people start to see the athletes as people, not just numbers, that’s when things really take off.
Keep asking questions. Keep listening. And don’t be afraid to show your coaches and student-athletes just how much you want to help tell their story.
That kind of effort doesn’t go unnoticed.
You’re off to a really good start.