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By Dan Drutz, Rowan University Assistant Director of Athletic Communications
A quarter-century - that’s how long Tom Di Camillo has served as a sports information, athletic communications and athletic administration professional. Whether as a one-man shop at Division II West Chester University of Pennsylvania, or the assistant commissioner of the Division II Pacific West Conference, or the commissioner of the Division III State University of New York Athletic Conference (SUNYAC), Di Camillo has dedicated his life to college athletics and specifically athletic communications.
“When I started in this profession 25 years ago I never thought in terms of being part of a career and a professional organization for a quarter of a century,” Di Camillo said. “When you throw a figure around like that, it really encapsulates a large portion of your life.”
In 1990, the sports editor of the Coatesville Record applied for the SID position at his alma mater, West Chester University, located in Southeastern Pennsylvania. That began a 16-year run promoting 24 programs, including a nationally ranked football team; baseball teams that advanced to the Division II College World Series; national championships in women’s lacrosse, Division I field hockey; and perennial powers in soccer, basketball and softball. Di Camillo did it all from his subterranean office in the basement of historic Hollinger Field House. Along the way, he also started an SID tree that is still strong today with former student workers scattered across the United States as athletic administrators and communications or public relations professionals.
“I wanted to be a sports writer and sports editor and at 25 I got to do those things,” Di Camillo commented. “I wanted to be an SID and I was
granted that opportunity at my alma mater. But my ultimate goal was to be a commissioner and being an SID led me to that goal.”
Di Camillo served on the CoSIDA Board for nine years, including a four-year stint as an at-large representative for Division II, followed by a five-year tenure in the officer and presidential rotation. He was just the third college division president, the first in nearly three decades, and the second president from Division II.
Di Camillo headed west to Arizona in 2006, continuing his career as sports information director of the Pacific West Conference while also accepting the simultaneous new challenge as a public relations specialist at Central Arizona College.
At CAC, Di Camillo quickly rose to director of marketing and public relations and then to executive director of the CAC Foundation, while in the PacWest he was promoted to assistant commissioner and helped double the size of the conference from seven to 14 schools in just five years.
In January of 2014, he left the PacWest and CAC to accept the role of commissioner of the State University of New York Athletic Conference (SUNYAC), an NCAA Division III conference with 10 schools competing in 20 sports located primarily in upstate New York.
As the commissioner, Di Camillo oversees all aspects of conference administration while using his athletic communications skills to help begin the redesign the league’s website and launch women’s tennis weekly awards. He also brought video streaming of the conference women’s tennis and swimming and diving championships to the SUNYAC for the first time this year.
“Even though I don’t perform day-to-day sports information duties anymore, I still use my skills and training as an SID over the last 25 years in my role as a commissioner,” Di Camillo remarked. “I take all of that athletic administration, experience as a member of a president’s cabinet, and that time on the CoSIDA Board and use it in helping me make good daily decisions as a conference commissioner. If you look at the number of commissioners who were SIDs during their career, especially at the Division III and II levels, it shows that the SID skillset is transferable to a multitude of jobs.”
Di Camillo already has been honored by CoSIDA with the Warren Berg Award and was inducted into the CoSIDA Hall of Fame in 2012 while serving as president.
He is a native of West Chester, Pennsylvania, and a graduate of West Chester East High School. DiCamillo and his wife Lynette celebrated their 25th wedding anniversary in May and they have one daughter, McKenna. They reside in Syracuse, New York.