Nancy Worley is in her 28th year as associate sports information director at the University of Louisville. She was profiled in the October 2011 FAME (Female Athletic Media Relations Executive) e-newsletter, a new venture by CoSIDA's FAME group. (Follow FAME on Facebook.) In the interview below, Worley talks about her long career in athletic communications and specifically talks about balancing motherhood, family, marriage and her career.
At Louisville, Worley's duties include the coordination of athletic communications for volleyball, women's tennis, swimming, lacrosse, and the Spirit Groups. Worley previously served as Illinois State assistant sports information director while working on a master's degree and also was SID at Valparaiso University for two years.
Worley worked at the 1996 Centennial Olympic Games where she covered beach volleyball, indoor volleyball and road cycling. In 2005, she was the recipient of the CoSIDA 25 Year Award, one of the few women to be named to this award. Worley and her husband, Mike, have four children, Jayne, Jeremy, Alec and Holly.
CoSIDA Member Spotlight: Q&A with Nancy Allison Worley
by Wendy Mayer, Purdue University Associate Director of Athletic Communications
Hometown: Elmhurst, Ill.
Alma Mater: Valparaiso 1980
Career Snapshot:
Valparaiso University: 1980-82
Illinois State: 1982-Nov. 1983
University of Louisville: Nov. 1983-present
How did you get started in this crazy world?
NAW: I was a journalism major at Valparaiso. I was a sports writer for the Herald Argus but I didn’t like the adversarial nature of being a sports reporter, especially when I was the only woman on that staff. It was the early 80s, there were very few women sports writers and I didn’t like going in locker rooms or calling coaches in the middle of the night to ask them if they were getting fired, etc, and all of the high school basketball drama that happens in the state of Indiana. So, when I had a chance to intern with the athletic department at my alma mater (Valparaiso), I jumped at it.
I worked for the golf coach, who was doing all of the SID duties, but there wasn’t an actual SID. After I graduated, they created a spot for me as the SID, but I also had to teach badminton and be the basketball recruiting secretary. So, I had to type all of the recruiting letters and handle 15 sports. I got paid $8000 and I thought it was the coolest thing ever.
I was lucky that I had a very understanding football coach, who decided not to fight me, but rather to teach me. I didn’t know enough about football other than to write about it and he really taught me to break down film and take stats. He decided, well, this is who I’ve got, and decided to make lemonade out of the lemon he was handed.
I was very fortunate because that actually led me to a job at Illinois State. They eliminated my position at Valpo because they decided that they didn’t have the budget for it. They eventually found the money for it, so I was always gratified because they felt the job was important, they just didn’t have the money at the time. So, I went to Illinois State as a graduate assistant and did football. They were merging their separate men’s and women’s programs, so they made the SIDs switch all of their sports, so some of the female SIDs were doing men’s sports. I worked for the men’s SID. I was secondary football and men’s basketball and baseball, which were big sports at Illinois State.
After that, I was about to finish my graduate degree, when Kenny Klein, who had actually met me at (a) CoSIDA (Convention), called me from Louisville and said I have to hire a woman and you are the only woman I know who can do football and knows everything about a lot of different sports. So, I went to Louisville. So Kenny and I were a two person shop doing all 17 sports.
You’ve been at Louisville since 1983 and have raised two children and been through and seen a lot over the years. How have you balanced all of that?
NAW: I think one of the things you have to learn is that you can have it all, but sometimes you just can’t have it all at the same time. I got married in 1986 and had my son in 1989 and my daughter in 1992 and got divorced shortly after she was born. I am sure that my lifestyle did take a toll on my marriage because at that point they had me traveling with three sports. He was almost a single dad at home. I was like the husband out on the road and he was like the mom at home with the kids. He was engineer and had a nice job, but I think that is not what he had signed up for.
We got divorced, he moved out of town and I was a single mom for almost 10 years, so my daughter and my son grew up as gym rats. I was oddly lucky that there weren’t very many women in our department, so the men in the department didn’t really know what to do with me. I just made my own rules and my own way of doing things, which meant my kids were at all the games. I got them little press passes and they had grown up around it so they knew how to behave. They weren’t the wild child running out onto the court but they know every little nook and cranny of all of our facilities. I taught them when they were little how to run scoreboard, keep score and shag balls. They have always been a part of sports information.
The only thing that was very troublesome for me when I had to travel with one sport was what to do with my kids. I was very fortunate that I had some girlfriends in Louisville that would take my kids. I would pack them up and pack me up, take them over and they walked to school from their houses and they would take care of them and then I would give them my season tickets. They loved to go to UofL games and I would give them my tickets. They would have done it for free though. I didn’t have any money to pay them, but I certainly had access. So every bit of gear, all of my tickets that I had, I gave to them. That worked very well for me.
I had three main girlfriends who helped out and I tried to mix it up so they weren’t constantly raising my children for me. Then, my brother moved to town and that helped a little bit too, because if I had a sick child, he could go pick them up at school for me. It is not in my nature to rely on other people, but because it was the only choice I had, I realized that I like to help people, so maybe somebody else feels like they like to help people too. I try to help them and pay it forward.
I am just glad that our athletic department is very kid-tolerant. When there is a day off school or a snow day, we all just bring our kids in. They are all friends and hang out together.
It helps a lot that our AD Tom Jurich is very family friendly. He was a single dad with two boys as a football coach before he remarried. I can’t imagine that. He is very understanding and he loves kids. Coach Pitino, as much as he likes his privacy, will go out of his way to talk and be very kind to kids.
What is your advice on raising children while having a professional career in athletics/sports information?
NAW: You have to have the mindset - don’t ask for permission. Don’t ask, “Is it okay if…” because they will say no without thinking it through. I just did it. What other choice did I have?
My kids would sleep on the bleachers while I was writing my story and I would carry them out of the arenas and put in car seats and take them home. Sometimes it was hard for them at school, maybe they were a little bit tired, but they enjoyed it. They still talk to some of the players when they come back. They were part of their family growing up. Our athletes were very nice, so nice that once my daughter brought a men’s basketball player as Show and Tell at her school.
I think sometimes when kids are away at college, they miss their little brothers and sisters, and my kids became everybody’s little brothers and sisters. In that way, I feel like I lucked out because my kids were good athletes, so they had a great understanding of the game. Our coaches were always willing to talk with them and work with them. It was just a part of their lives. Now, what if I had a child that was a dancer or something like that where I had to go to recitals, I don’t know. But, it just worked out that my kids were athletes. My daughter is a volleyball player, so I could trust her with a club coach because I knew that coach because it was a former player. When she was off on a club weekend, she would go with them.
My kids had cell phones when they were way younger than most kids because I had to have constant contact with them. I always made a point to them that if they called I would pick up. That way they always knew that they were first, which is important, because sometimes they are not first when it comes to holidays and other things.
My family was always good about moving our holidays. We have Thanksgiving at different times because I might be on the road or I host Thanksgiving for the family because I am hosting a volleyball tournament the day after Thanksgiving. When you are working on Mother’s Day, Father’s Day and all of these holidays, it takes a toll in some ways, but if you go out of your way and plan ahead… it is less intrusive to your family.
How do you balance your relationships/time?
NAW: My husband, my second and last husband as I jokingly call him, is a retired policeman, so he understands what it is like to not have control of your schedule. You have to be a policeman on Thanksgiving or Christmas Eve or New Year’s Eve. He is very understanding because he knows what it was like. He knows what he is signed up for with me and I know what he had to go through. So, there is a mutual respect of the management of your time.
I think that if you can somehow involve your spouse in some small way, that helps. My husband is the official scorer for volleyball. He loves to do that and he is an important part of the program. He is not just sitting up in the stands waiting for me. He talks to the officials and assigns our line judges. He enjoys the volleyball world. If he gets a little responsibility, all the better. He knows what I am dealing with then. The more he helps me, the more time I have for him. You don’t have to make them work, but that is a good way to keep them involved. Just like my kids shagging balls and running when they were little, they have their responsibility and take ownership of it. It doesn’t become like waiting out a sentence, like waiting until this game is over until they can have their life. They were living and having their social life then.
I also brought (my children's) friends, which sometimes was a pain, but for the most part I tried to accommodate them as much as I could, without compromising what I had to do as a job. They were very good about mature and not nagging and yelling out during a press conference asking for money. They both now go to UofL and my son is the announcer for lacrosse, field hockey and soccer and does the videos for the football wall. My daughter is just a freshman so she hasn’t really gotten involved yet.
It is the family that you create. If you try to keep them separate then your kids are going to grow up and have all of their milestones without you. But, if you incorporate the athletic department as part of your family… they all would go to events like Senior Night for my son. We had people from the athletic department there cheering him as if he was their son.
I think that is really the secret. It is hard. I have only been at one place, Louisville, but it would be hard to do that and move around. People ask why I haven’t moved around. I couldn’t ask people, if I had to move somewhere else, to watch my kids when I don’t have any history with them. The people who helped me did it because they loved me, not because they loved Louisville volleyball, but because they loved me.
People ask me… “Wow your career really stalled out as a mom, you never became the head SID somewhere…” - and I say not really. In my mind, my real career is being a parent. Having the job at Louisville has enabled me to still be an excellent parent. Because I have been at the same job, I do my job very well and I have a lot of support systems in place so that I can have the flexible to take care of my kids and have a little say in my schedule.
I usually take one volleyball trip off a year, because I have something that my kids need me to attend. That has always been a part of our deal. My coaches also know that they can call me. I take
on a bit of a family situation with them. Sometimes it is a little bit intrusive in terms of calling at odd hours, but if they feel that they are taken care of, I have more flexibility to do what I need to do. If I have to take my kid to get a vaccination, I have already taken care of my coaches this morning at 6 o’clock or answered their email at midnight last night.
What would be your words of wisdom for young SIDs preparing to marry/start a family?
NAW: I would urge SIDs to have long engagements. Your spouse or your future spouse needs to see you in two cycles of your job to see how it goes and see the ebb and flow. If they can’t live with that, then don’t make the mistake of getting married or you always having the stress of “I have to get home, I have to get home.” And you just get so stressed. Like when I was having problems in my first marriage, he knew he had me on how much time my job took. That was before computers, so I had to do stuff at the office, I couldn’t go take my backpack and my laptop and go home. There was only one fax machine in the whole athletic department and you had to fax your story to the newspaper.
You had to all this stuff from work. He had met me when I was an SID, but he was such a fan of UofL sports that it was fun in the beginning because he got to go to all of the events and have access. But, he wasn’t aware of how much time it took me to do my job or that I might have a very intense period of my job, like from August to November with volleyball with virtually no days off because at U of L we all work home football games and have to help each other out.
I see young SIDs now say “I didn’t know we had to come in extra, I already promised my girlfriend that she could cook me dinner.” What are you thinking???!… It’s basketball season or its NCAA pairings, you are always going to have to work that Sunday. He or she needs to see that.
I also encourage young SIDs to make sure your spouse has something else that they like to do. If they like to golf or whatever tell them …. GO! It is not all about being next to me and both of us living my life. We can both have our separate interests. I’ll support yours if you support mine.
It is a crazy lifestyle that we live. If he/she has some other interest like music, let him/her go to concerts with his buddies. I feel like you can live side by side and share each other’s interests, but you don’t have to live each other’s lives. Support each other’s interests if they don’t fall within your sphere of interest. I feel that is a mistake I made in my first marriage. Everything was working around my schedule and he had to live his whole life around that. I give him a lot of credit for hanging out and putting up with that.
I see it constantly where somebody has to give something up and a lot of SIDs leave the business because their spouse values quantity of time rather than quality of time in their relationships. If you are going to make it last, you have to really cherish the quality time you have with your family, rather than just logging time sitting and mindlessly watching television together.
I see people leave the business and they miss the freshness of different seasons or they miss being around kids or a team that are really good at something… If you can’t stick it out and your family needs you to the point where you have to change your lifestyle, I would urge you to stay involved in some way. Keep your hand it some way, doing stats or running scoreboard. We have two former SIDs at U of L who come back and get their fix by helping us every football and basketball game.
Some final thoughts?
You don’t get thanked very often by your coaches and there is only so much recognition and awards that CoSIDA can hand out; if you wait around for that, you will go crazy or get clinically depressed. You have to be able to generate your own positive self-reinforcement, knowing that you are good and having the self confidence to make it.