• 2016 CoSIDA Special Awards general announcement/release
• Special Awards feature story schedule
by Mary Ann Mitchell, University of Missouri-St. Louis/Special Awards Committee
John Kean was down to his last semester of undergraduate work at Southeast Missouri State when he was offered the
opportunity to work for Ron Hines in the sports information office as a graduate assistant. He accepted the newly funded position and since then has become a leader in the profession over the course of his career.
Kean will receive his 25-year award from the College Sports Information Directors of America (CoSIDA) in June. He has spent all 25 of those years (26 to be exact) at Missouri University of Science and Technology (Missouri S&T)
in Rolla, Missouri, where he started in the summer of 1990.
“I really love what I do,” Kean said. “You have to have a passion for what this job entails – being around sports, writing, promoting student-athletes. When you put all those together, it’s really what has kept me in the profession.”
And what has kept him at S&T for 26 years is family – both personally and professionally. Kean grew up 110 miles northeast in Florissant, Missouri, a suburb of St. Louis. His mother passed away four years into the job and he wanted to stay close enough to his dad. Kean also got married and started his own family. By the time his father passed away in 2006, he was vested in S&T and his family had planted their roots in Rolla.
“I’ve been able to build a good situation here at Missouri S&T on a professional level,” he said. “I’ve been able to expand some things that hadn’t been done before.”
Kean also credits the coaches and staff, along with the student-athletes for keeping him at Missouri S&T, which is known primarily as an engineering school.
“The students here are top of the line with the demands of the academic curriculum and they go on to do great things in their own professional lives,” he said. “The opportunity to reconnect with them when they come back is a real highlight.”
Just like other SIDs across the county, a lot has changed for Kean in his role as an SID. He no longer does hand stats and doesn’t use a fax machine. It’s now all about the web, social media and video.
“This profession is one that is always changing, but I’ve been able to adapt to those changes,” said Kean. “You have to if you want to stay in tune with what’s going on today. You can’t live off what we did 20 years ago – or even 10 years ago.”
While he has learned most of the change as they come, he has also been at the forefront of some of that change.
“We were the first school in the MIAA to go to Stat Crew in basketball stats and soon after other schools started following us,” Kean said. “Now its standard practice that everyone is using some sort of computerized statistical program.”
Kean has also been heavily involved with CoSIDA and D2SIDA. He served as an at-large board member with the
Division II group and is the current D2SIDA president, where he has helped organize the divisional day as part of the annual convention. Kean has also played a vital role in the updated D2SIDA strategic document.
“Anytime you are put into a position of leadership, it is something that can be beneficial to your career and I am thankful for those opportunities,” Kean said. “Especially with D2SIDA, where it’s been a satisfying opportunity to be in that role and to try and set an example for what we want to get done. I’ve enjoyed continuing what former presidents Roy Pickerill, Rich Herman and Greg Goings have started and have hopefully paved the road for those to follow.”
Kean’s journey as an SID hasn’t always been easy. It’s had its challenges, most notably raising a family in a job that requires countless hours.
“My wife is a saint for the things she has done and still does when I’ve been out of town or working late on nights and weekends,” Kean said. “I’ve always tried to do what I could to be at my kids’ events whenever possible and still do today, even though they are both in college now.”
The positives of the profession still outweigh all the negatives for Kean and he doesn’t see anything else more fitting for him.
“When the time does come to step away, I can hopefully say I had a good career in sports information,” Kean added.
Those that know Kean it is safe to say he has already accomplished that and will continue to do so until he writes his last release.