This is the next profile Q and A in a series entitled
Communicators Outside the Lines: Better Yourself, Better Your Community produced by the CoSIDA Goodwill & Wellness Committee. Read past profiles at
CoSIDA.com/CommunicatorsOTL.
HAVE IDEAS OR MEMBERS TO NOMINATE FOR THIS SERIES?
If you have any ideas for this series, which will revolve around CoSIDA member volunteerism and health and wellness, please contact Goodwill and Wellness Committee chair
Chris Mitchell, Washington University in St. Louis Assistant AD for Communications, at (618) 560-9280 or
mitchell@wustl.edu.
Q&A with Dave Cook
Assistant Athletic Director for Communications, Eastern Washington
by Denise Thompson, Assistant Commissioner of Communications and External Affairs, Big Sky Conference
CoSIDA Goodwill and Wellness Committee Member
Cook with son Evan, daughter Olivia and wife Freida.
Eastern Washington’s
Dave Cook has been able to find a balance between being a long-standing sports information director and having a family — something we all wish we knew how to balance so easily. Add to that his ability to live a healthy lifestyle, while lending a hand to others, and he’s a prime candidate for All-Around SID. His face has been well-known in the Big Sky Conference since the 1980’s, and his personality is contagious. Dave describes how he’s been able to balance it all.
Q. What motivates you to want to live a healthy lifestyle?
COOK: I love to eat and drink, enough said! That’s part of it, but most of all I find that I’m physically and mentally more ready for the rigors and uncertainty of the day by starting it with a run. After my kids became young adults (a.k.a. drive themselves), I had more time to make a commitment. I found that I felt worse on any day I didn’t run than any day I did. Thus, simple logic told me to run every day — so in the last nine years I’ve missed maybe a hand’s worth of days, with a current streak of 6+ years running every day at least 3 miles. As any SID knows, a streak takes on a life of its own and mine certainly has! No matter what I do the night before, it’s all predicated on making sure I can get that run in the next morning.
Q. How do you manage to find time to workout, while also running the Eastern Washington communications office?
COOK: Get out of bed ... early! I tried mid-work day and post-work day runs, but too many times being busy or tired was a convenient excuse to skip. Once I became a morning person, my day isn’t complete without that run. Now, I’ve added a Tuesday evening run with local group of runners we call the Flightless Birds. This group has truly become a family of its own, and that has shown my wife, Freida, and I the power of running socially.
Q. How did you go from running for health/fun to wanting to compete in races?
COOK: Truthfully, I don’t run very many. I want to walk out my front door and start running, then end it with a stretch and dip in the hot tub. I can do all that in 45 minutes and be ready for the obstacles of the day. But I do annually run Bloomsday in Spokane, a Thanksgiving Turkey Trot somewhere and most runs that take place in our college town of Cheney — plus a few others that may involve some combination of food and beverage. I ran a half-marathon in about 1989 and didn’t enjoy it, then had to do one again in 2016 just because everybody else around me was. But I’m not thrilled by distances — in fact, without country music and my wireless headphones, I find running to be quite boring.
Q. Running is a family affair. Did you get your wife into running or was it vice versa?
COOK: It was simultaneous, and in 1988 when we met it was actually a conversation starter because we both dabbled in the fun run scene. We don’t run together very much — she runs longer distances slower, and I run shorter distances faster. Sort of like the tortoise and the hare, but she’s much faster than a turtle and I’m much slower than a rabbit.
Q.You were awarded the Washington State Track and Field Coaches Association Contributor Award in 2003 and 2014 because of your involvement with the WIAA State Track and Field Championships. What inspired you to want to lend a helping hand?
COOK: What’s funny is I used to be obsessed by college baseball, but neither Idaho or Eastern Washington had it in my years as a SID from 1986-on. But I was around some great track coaches at Idaho (Mike Keller) and Eastern (Jerry Martin) who really made track and field fun to work with. In 1996, Jerry and I heard the WIAA didn’t have a place for its championship for smaller schools, so we offered to help. We’ve been doing it ever since at EWU, and it’s been a passion of mine I feel fortunate to be a part of for so long. The high schools feel like Cheney is their home, and that warms my heart every spring.
Q. You’re in your 28th-consecutive year as sports information director at Eastern Washington and 33rd overall as a SID. What has motivated you to stay in the sports information business for so long?
COOK: In a word, people. I’ve been so blessed when it comes to the media I serve, the coaches/administrators I’ve worked with, the student-athletes I’ve had the privilege of reporting on and the game staff/students/assistants who have helped me along the way. If you love the people and what you do, 33 years goes by very, very fast.
Q. What has been your greatest accomplishment as an SID?
COOK: Seeing the honors student-athletes are nominated for because of their accomplishments are very gratifying, but whether they win or lose really doesn’t matter. Seeing them reach their potential as students, athletes and people is the coolest thing ever. As an example, I’ve recently watched an unknown walk-on quarterback develop into a Walter Payton Award finalist, and then get to see him in front of a classroom of third-graders who absolutely adore him just for being a regular guy (albeit with his picture on a schedule poster). He’s a BMOC now, but you’d never be able to tell it by talking to him. I have countless examples like that of true character shining through, and now, as the years pass by, we get to induct some of them into our Hall of Fame. Our Hall of Fame, like the track meet that started in the same year in 1996, is another passion of mine I truly hope to work on until the day I die. My greatest joy comes in honoring others.
Q. What's the best piece of advice you've ever gotten on work-life balance and how has it helped?
COOK: In my early days as a SID and father, Dick Zornes told me to make sure to make time for your family — and he proceeded to show my infant son how to get into a football stance. That was priceless. I have heeded that advice and passed it along to those who work for me. I’m so thankful that through the years I’ve worked for Dick, John Johnson, Scott Barnes and Bill Chaves, that they too value family so much as husbands and fathers themselves.
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