Note: This is the 18th article in the CoSIDA Special Awards feature series which is highlighting all 2013 Special Award recipients. All recipients will be honored at the
CoSIDA Convention (June 12-15) in conjunction with the NACDA and Affiliates Convention at Orlando's Marriott World Center.
See the full list of recipients and features schedule.
by Roger Crosley
ECAC DIrector of Communications
In the hit sitcom Seinfeld, George Costanza’s character played by Jason Alexander, declared in one episode that the coming season was going to be “The Summer of George!” While George’s plans didn’t exactly pan out, things are different for
Jim Seavey. The summer of 2013 is definitely “The Summer of Jim.”
At the Massachusetts Maritime Academy, Seavey serves as both the Director of Sports Information and Compliance.
Seavey may need to build a new wing on the Bridgewater, Mass., home he shares with his wife Cheryl and daughters Mikayla and Lindsey, to house the three major awards he’ll be picking up. At the CoSIDA workshop in Orlando, Jim will be inducted with the Class of 2013 into the CoSIDA Hall of Fame. He’ll also be given his 25-Year Award for his long tenure of service. A couple of weeks earlier in Manchester, N.H., he will have received ECAC-SIDA’s highest honor,
the Irving T. Marsh Award.
“Ít still hasn’t sunk in,” Seavey says. “It’s a truly humbling honor to be on the same lists of people
who have helped me through my career, more as friends than colleagues.”
Seavey’s journey to the Hall of Fame began at Marquette University (“because my mother wouldn’t let me go to UCLA”) with a journalism major and career plans to be a sportswriter for his native New England
Boston Globe. When columnists from the
Globe would travel to Milwaukee with the Celtics, Seavey managed to befriend them and asked them to critique his writing. He not only took their advice to heart, but made lasting networking contacts that paid handsomely when he returned to New England.
In December of his senior year at Marquette, a classmate and one of Seavey’s closest friends was in an accident. Seavey went to the hospital to lend support to the family. While there, the sports editor of Marquette’s student newspaper called him and asked him for inside information about what had happened.
“I decided then,” he says, “that I wanted to do positive work for people, and not try to dig for the negative. Sports information gave me that opportunity.”
“I worked for Betsy Van Sickle in the Marquette sports information office. Betsy was a pioneer for women in the profession,” Seavey explains. “To be able to learn from her was an amazing experience. She taught me there is one way to do things: the Marquette Way. Everything I do to this day is based on that.”
Following graduation, the benefits of what Seavey learned were first used at Loras College in Iowa. After a year there, New England beckoned and Seavey accepted a position at Nichols College in Dudley, Mass. He made an immediate impression on those who came into contact with him.
“I remember attending a New England Football Writers weekly luncheon when Jim got to Nichols,” 2010 CoSIDA Hall of Famer Roger Crosley remembers. “The luncheons were a pretty staid with a relatively ‘personality free’ group of coaches recapping the last week’s games and previewing the next opponent.
“One week we show up and there’s a KitKat Bar at everyone’s place. Nichols had a very good running back named Kit Holmes, and Jim decided leaving the candy bars at everyone’s seat would remind them of who Kit Holmes was. Obviously it worked, because to this day everyone who was there remembers Kit Holmes and everyone immediately knew who Jim Seavey was. He also managed to inject some badly needed personality into the group.”
Dudley, Mass. was another one-year stop as Seavey stepped up a division and took his talents to Merrimack College. It was at Merrimack where he became involved with CoSIDA's Capital One Academic All-America® program and began a passion that still burns deeply.
“Dick Lipe of Bentley was the chair of the committee at the time,” noted Seavey. “I asked him how I could become involved and he said, ‘You’re on the committee’.”
That simple conversation has resulted in a 22-year commitment that in 2009 was recognized with Seavey recognized with CoSIDA's Lester Jordan Award for “exemplary service to the organization’s Academic All-America® program and the promotion of the ideals of being a student-athlete”. Last summer Seavey was named the Committee's associate chair for marketing and Hall of Fame event operations after serving for four years as a Vice Chair. He previously served for 17 years as both a national and district coordinator.
Service is in Seavey’s DNA. The list of organizations, championships, and conferences with which he has worked is as long and varied. Many of the positions are volunteer, and he approaches each with the same zeal and enthusiasm as he does his full-time job.
His professional passion for the Capital One Academic All-America® program has been matched only by his dedication to ECAC-SIDA. He has hosted two ECAC-SIDA Workshops and served that organization throughout its presidential rotation, including serving as its president and workshop chair during that organization’s 50th Anniversary celebration. He is currently in his second stint as ECAC-SIDA Marketing Director.
“Jim has been a loyal, committed and devoted ‘friend’ to our profession for nearly a quarter of century,” University of Notre Dame Assistant Athletic Director and fellow 2013 CoSIDA Hall of Fame inductee Bernie Cafarelli says. “Jim’s time as a sports media relations professional has been characterized by a passion to service for the countless coaches, student-athletes and administrators that he has worked with and for throughout his career. His contributions, however, have extended beyond the campuses where he has worked. What I have most respected about Jim is the history he has shown and his willingness to serve on so many different committees and organizations in a very proactive manner.”
Bill Gorman, Associate Director of Athletics at Wentworth Institute of Technology, echoes that sentiment.
“Need an extra statistician? Jim is there. Hosting an NCAA Tournament? Jim is there. Need help writing a release during a challenging time? Jim is there to lend an ear and provide an extra set of eyes. While these are some great examples of him giving his time to help others, there is one occasion that will always stick out in my mind. On February 10, 2004, I lost my dad after a lengthy battle with cancer. It was a Tuesday morning and in the midst of my family’s mourning and making arrangements, I realized we had a home basketball doubleheader two nights later and because I am a one-person shop, I needed someone to cover for me. One quick call was made to Jim and he and his intern staffed the game for me. I will be forever grateful that he came through in my time of need.”
Following his time at Merrimack, Seavey moved across Interstate 93 to UMass Lowell. That led to a stint at Stonehill where he was media relations director, tournament coordinator and site coordinator for four NCAA Championship competitions and media relations director for a fifth. He came aboard as an Assistant Athletics Director in 1998 and was promoted to Associate Athletics Director for External Affairs & Communications just two years later.
Yet in 2007, Seavey was feeling the pressure that a young family can pose on a job with non-traditional hours.
“I came home from work around midnight for about the 10th night in a row,” he remembers. “The girls were eight and five at the time. Cheryl’s dad (the late Art Tebou) was suffering from throat cancer and in the hospital, and I was never around when they needed me to be. As much as I loved being in the business, I love my family more. I had to take a break.”
An opportunity to work in the insurance industry came along that spring, but Seavey never truly left sports information behind. He maintained his memberships in professional organizations and when the sports information position at Suffolk University opened that summer, he leapt at the opportunity.
“That year was truly the best of both worlds,” Seavey says. “I was able to be in the business while spending more time with my family.”
“And I evened learned a thing or two about selling insurance, which never hurts in our business,” he quipped.
In 2009 he reversed his commute by taking the position of Director of Sports Information and Compliance at Massachusetts Maritime Academy. Proving that he is getting better rather than older, he successfully nominated and promoted two major NCAA honors that Massachusetts Maritime received in an 18-month span: Captain Richard Phillips received the NCAA Award of Valor in January, 2010 and Meredith Hall was one of four recipients of the NCAA Sportsmanship Award in August of 2011.
Roy Pickerill of Kentucky Wesleyan University and a member of the CoSIDA Hall of Fame Class of 1999 says, “I have known Jim for nearly 30 years where his passionate enthusiasm, trailblazing innovating ideas and mentoring for our profession and student-athletes is unparalleled and inspiring to all. When describing the ideal sports information director, no one needs to look any further than Jim Seavey.”
“I’ve been very blessed to have great mentors,” Seavey says while rattling off a list of who’s who in CoSIDA. “I firmly believe that no one is honored for anything without having a lasting debt to those they try to emulate.”