College Sports Information Directors of America

Fifth in a series
CoSIDA’s Postgraduate Scholarship program began in 1981 and celebrated its 35^th anniversary just last year. As a follow-up to a feature in the February edition of CoSIDA 360 magazine that caught up with a number of past scholarship recipients, this series will go in-depth with several winners in a Q&A format.

For more information regarding the deadlines – all in April 2017 – for the 2017 postgraduate scholarship and other CoSIDA scholarships and grants, go to http://www.cosida.com/sports/2014/1/30/scholarshipgrants_program.aspx

Related Stories
• CoSIDA Postgraduate Scholarship Recipients – Where Are They Now? Akilah Laster
• CoSIDA Postgraduate Scholarship Recipients – Where Are They Now? Jared Verner
• CoSIDA Postgraduate Scholarship Recipients – Where Are They Now? Beth Haag
• CoSIDA Postgraduate Scholarship Recipients – Where Are They Now? Jeff Griesch

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Craig Bohnert (1981)
Current position: Innkeeper, Inn on Crescent Lake (Excelsior Springs, Mo.)
Former Assistant Executive Director of Communications, National Soccer Coaches Association of America (2000-12)
Undergraduate school: University of Evansville (1981)
Graduate school: Illinois State University (1983)
 
What do you remember about the postgraduate scholarship application process and promotion?
I decided to go to grad school late in my senior year at the University of Evansville, after my father passed away early that February. I wasn’t aware of the scholarship at that time, but the person I was going to work for, Tom Lamonica, was a member of the scholarship committee and urged me to apply for it.

I remember receiving the call informing me that I’d been selected. It was during the summer and I was at work as a busboy at the Red Lobster restaurant in Evansville. They called me to the phone, and it was Jim Marchiony, who was the SID at Georgetown University at the time. It was a great surprise and an honor to be selected. It wasn’t until much later that I found out I was the first recipient of the scholarship, which makes the honor even more special. Lamonica told me later that I was a unanimous selection, which was quite humbling.

I got into sports information when Tom recruited me after reading an article I’d written for a basic newswriting class. I had transferred from Purdue to UE in the wake of the December 1977 plane crash that took the lives of the Aces basketball team. My brother was student manager for the team and was on the plane because he was responsible for shooting game analysis film. They gave me his scholarship to work as a student manager and do game film, but Tom was able to convince the athletic business manager to let me work for him as well, which is how I got my start. It was a fascinating time to be involved with the UE program as the national media covered the rebuilding of the program. I learned a great deal about how to deal with the media during that time.

What was the amount of the scholarship? Did the CoSIDA scholarship play any role in what grad school you attended?
The amount back then was $500, which is just over $1,300 in today’s dollars. It was a tremendous help in dealing with the expenses I encountered moving away from home and getting out on my own for the first time. Since I already had decided to attend Illinois State to do my grad work, the scholarship wasn’t a factor in where I was going to school.
 

Where did you attend grad school and what was your experience in sports information there like?
I attended Illinois State. I had worked with Tom Lamonica as an undergrad at the University of Evansville. Midway through my junior year he took the job as SID at ISU, and he called me the spring of my senior year to offer me his GA position. I hadn’t considered going to grad school, but since my father had passed away about a month before Tom called me I thought it would be a good idea to pursue my master’s degree to improve my marketability when I was ready to pursue a full-time position.

Even though I was there before they established their respected sports administration master’s program, I had some great experiences while I was a grad student! After my first year working with Tom, I moved into a newly-created GA position in athletic marketing and fundraising, which helped me broaden my skill set and added new experiences to my background. During that time I also made connections that allowed me to pursue my dream of working in the Olympic movement. During that time I learned how to think outside the box, to look at challenges from different angles to see how I could best address the issues at hand and provide the best service possible to the programs and athletes I worked for.

In retrospect, how did receiving the CoSIDA scholarship help advance your athletics communications career?
It definitely helped ease the financial burden of attending graduate school, but it also provided me the opportunity to meet new people and have a wide variety of experiences that I would not have had otherwise. Since ISU had just joined the Missouri Valley Conference, I was able to develop connections with a great network of colleagues who still are friends today. I also was able to experience the challenges and opportunities created by an NCAA appearance when ISU won the Missouri Valley tournament my second year. That experience was invaluable the following year in my first full-time SID job when Morehead State made the tournament, and again when Murray State earned post-season berths in football and basketball.

What have been some of the highlights of your professional career?
Through contacts I made during grad school I was able to get a volunteer position on the media staff for the Los Angeles 1984 Olympic Games, working as assistant venue press chief for gymnastics and tennis. Because of that experience, and through contacts I made the following year at the CoSIDA Convention in Boston, I was able to begin my involvement with the U.S. Olympic Committee. That led to working as a press officer at the U.S. Olympic Festivals, my full-time positions as the media contacts for U.S. Canoe and Kayak Team and USA Gymnastics, and eventually my current work writing breaking news bulletins for Team USA at the Olympic Games and as a contract writer for TeamUSA.org. When I began I never could have imagined working 10 Olympic Games!
 

One achievement that I am proud of is starting the Division I-AA player of the week award in the mid-1980s when I was the SID at Murray State University. At that time, I-AA football (now called the FCS) was highly regionalized. It was difficult to attract national attention to the athletes’ achievements and to get a sense of just how good teams were compared to each other on a national level. We discussed this challenge during a I-AA meeting at the CoSIDA Convention, and that’s when the concept of a player of the week award came up. I put together the framework of the process and implemented it. Each I-AA conference office nominated one of their league players of the week for the award, and I would compile those nominations and send them to a independent selector, a fellow SID at a non-football Division I school whose identity I kept secret to avoid politicking. Once the choice was made, I notified the conference offices and they took care of promotion through their normal distribution channels. That all sounds pretty simple in the internet era, but back then I was doing it all with a phone, a telecopier and a typewriter! As the player of the week award took hold, we were able to expand to include a pre-season All-America team, which helped grow awareness of the quality of competition at the I-AA level back in the days of players like Sean Payton at Eastern Illinois and two-way star Gordie Lockbaum at Holy Cross. The skills I learned as I developed these programs would come in handy later in my career when I worked at the National Soccer Coaches Association of America, where I had a lot of hands-on responsibility with their extensive awards program.