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Gregory Goings (Bowie State University), 25-Year Award
by Wayne Block, Coordinator of Athletic Marketing and Public Relations, Mesa Community College / CoSIDA Special Awards Committee member
Greg Goings, second from left, with a group at Bowie State.
Many sports information directors have favorite moments during their careers. It might be winning a national, or even conference championship. Maybe a particularly thrilling, improbable, victory by one of their teams.
Greg Goings, of Bowie State, who will receive his CoSIDA 25-year Award at the conclave in Orlando this summer, has hundreds, probably even thousands.
For him, those favorite moments have been watching student-athletes enter school with the untapped potential of freshmen and seeing them become the finished product of a college graduate.
“The biggest joy that I get is seeing the kids come in as freshmen and then graduate,” explains Goings. “It’s important to me that they understand they are student-athletes, but students first. And I like to see them stick around and fight through it and earn that degree.”
Goings earned his degree from Virginia State in 1984. He began his SID career in 1988 at his alma mater and during much of the time that he was promoting the Trojans he was pursuing another passion – radio.
He was an on-air personality with several stations in the Richmond/Petersburg, Va., area.
“That’s something I really loved then, and if I was afforded the opportunity to do it now I would do it again,” he adds.
He got a true taste of what many radio personalities face while at one station.
“My first job was at an adult contemporary station,” he explains. “And then, literally overnight, it switched to country.”
Goings was tutored by some of the most outstanding SIDs among historically black colleges and universities in the East, many of whom, unfortunately, have since passed away. He began as a student at Virginia State under the late LeCounte Conaway and was also greatly influenced by others such as the late Wallace Dooley, the late John Holley, Bill Hamilton and Sam Jefferson.
It was Holley, known best for his work at Norfolk State, who supplied him with a philosophy that he tries to live by today.
“John always said, ‘the work will be there tomorrow’” Goings remembers. “You have to understand that you have life beyond that job. You have to take time for yourself.”
Goings has been very active in CoSIDA. He recently completed a four-year term as an at-large College Division representative on the CoSIDA Board of Directors and was also President of the Division II Sports Information Directors Association.
He was named Central Intercollegiate Athletic Association (CIAA) Sports Information Director of the Year three times and is a past-president of the conference’s SID Association.
After taking some time away from sports information work, Goings returned as SID at Bowie State. This afforded him a chance to experience something some, but not many, SIDs get to do.
Bowie State, like Virginia State. is a member of the CIAA. Was it strange returning to both his alma mater and previous employer, with an enemy squad?
“I love going back and giving back to Virginia State,” he says. “We’re friends before the game, I can’t stand you during the game, but once the game is over we’re friends again.”
Goings also has a vocation that many SIDs would never be able to understand – he is a basketball referee.
“I call it my therapy,” he notes. “I’m having fun doing sports information and still officiating basketball.” Goings works on the Division II level, as well as junior college and high school – and also has Division I experience.
Another sideline is a company he has owned since 2006, Your StatCrew, providing statistical services for organizations without the ability to handle statistics themselves.
He is the official statistician for the Maryland Public Secondary Schools Athletic Association Girls State Basketball Championships. In addition, he was the statistician for the Reviving Baseball in the Inner Cities (RBI) World Series for several years and was a press officer for the United States Olympic Festival in 1995.
A career which began as a college student, as did so many SIDs, has blossomed into a 25-year adventure for one of the well-respected SIDs in the country.
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