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This feature is part of our series of profiles showcasing members throughout the CoSIDA membership during the celebration of CoSIDA Membership Recognition Week for 2018. See more features at CoSIDA.com/ThankYourSID.


Ben Matchett – University of Calgary Assistant Athletic Director, Operations & Communications
by Barb Kowal - CoSIDA, Director of External Affairs and Professional Development
 

Since 2007, Ben Matchett has served as the head of athletic communications the University of Calgary. In 2011, he was promoted to Assistant Athletic Director, Operations and Communications, for the Dinos nationally-recognized athletic program. His work with Calgary athletics actually began in 2000 when he stepped into the office of long-time Calgary Sports Information Director and CoSIDA Hall of Famer Jack Neumann as an undergraduate student.

Since taking over for Neumann, Matchett has been involved in U Sports leadership positions. Read more about his background, his leadership role at Calgary, and why he lists “Troubleshooter” and “Occasionally overbearing on punctuation; believer in the Oxford comma” in his Twitter bio.

In 140 characters or less, tell us who you are and how you got to where you are today.
I showed up at UCalgary as a freshman wanting to get involved, and athletics was my way in. Almost 20 years later I still haven’t left!

In addition to your bachelor of commerce and bachelor of arts (in political science) degrees from the University of Calgary, and went on and graduated from the Intercollegiate Athletic Leadership M.Ed. program at the University of Washington. What has that advanced degree meant to you?
I graduated from the University of Washington’s IAL MEd program in 2014. In addition to going through the program with a great group of colleagues and expanding my network, I became much more well-rounded in my current role. I discovered a passion for the academic success of our student-athletes and helped design our academic support plan – one that has led to higher retention, increases in overall GPA, and back-to-back record numbers of Academic All-Canadian student-athletes. My long-term career goals aren’t concrete, but wherever I end up I know graduating from the IAL program will be of great benefit.

Having been elevated to an Assistant AD position as few years ago, what are your future career plans? Also, your title is Asst AD, Operations and Communications – what do your responsibilities entail as holding both roles?
I like to say I’m the ‘backup everything’ – I’ve done virtually every job in our department, full- and part-time, including two stints as Interim Athletic Director! Being an AD is something I may consider down the road, but for now I love what I do and the variety that my role brings. My primary responsibilities are managing our marketing, events, and communications team, including all of the part-time and student staff associated with the departments. I also sit on the athletics leadership team, where I get to be involved in almost every aspect of how our department functions.

 

What work outside your Calgary job are you doing, whether it be regional or national committee work or advocacy work?
I’ve been involved in various committees over the years. Currently I’m on the U Sports commercial committee which helps guide our national commercial strategy. Previously, I have served on the board of directors for both our conference and our national governing body. I have been fortunate to work with leaders who have seen the importance of giving communications a seat at the decision-making table, and the opportunity to enhance my skill set while representing our profession has been really valuable for me.

I have also had the opportunity to represent Canada at the Universiade as part of the mission staff on two separate occasions and hope to be able to do so again.

The Dinos have a proud Olympic and national championship history. You just won another national championship this week in men’s cross country, and you’ve had numerous Olympians, including seven who competed at the 2016 Rio Olympics. What’s it like to work with programs of high national and international caliber?
It’s an honour to work with all of our student-athletes, and we’re fortunate to be able to attract so many high-performance athletes and coaches to our programs. We always have a good news story to tell, which certainly makes our job easier, and sometimes it creates some pretty surreal moments. We once had an intern who mentioned to me he would love to see and hold an Olympic medal. Two days later, our women’s hockey coach, Danielle Goyette, brought in five of them – four gold and a silver – and he couldn’t believe it. And not long after that, Erica Wiebe won gold in wrestling in Rio.

What’s one trend in athletic communications that you are a fan of?
There are so many tools that we have access to now that make us so much more productive than we ever could have been in the past, especially using cloud-based services like live highlight clipping, infographics creators, etc. We’re a small staff here at Calgary – just two of us full-time in communications for a 30,000-student institution with 500 student-athletes – so we need to rely on our student staff for a significant amount of our front-line work. The ability to give them robust, easy-to-understand tools to take some of the stress off us has been invaluable.

What’s the project or campaign or success at Calgary that you’re proudest of? Why?
So much of our success comes down to preparation and the ability to strike when the moment presents itself. On Nov. 11, 2017, we won our football conference championship game when our kicker hit a 59-yard field goal with no time left on the clock. Not only was it the longest field goal at the university level ever in Canada, but there have only been a handful anywhere close to that distance at any level of Canadian football, including the CFL.

There’s no way you can anticipate a moment like that, but we were ready when it did happen and were able to take advantage of it. Not only did it go viral on social media, approaching a million views across all platforms, but we were able to get it on ESPN’s SportsCenter Top 10 that night – which is basically unheard of in Canada. At the end of the day the moment itself had nothing to do with us, but we were ready when it did happen and I’m proud of how we were able to leverage it into a big moment for our university.

 

As a connected sports fan, what’s the best piece of sports content that you have recently consumed?
I recently re-read this article - even though it’s a couple years old - because a) it makes me laugh out loud every time, and b) it’s just so off-beat and different that it stands out still. Blue Jays fan or not, most Canadians will never forget The Bat Flip.

https://sportsworld.nbcsports.com/blue-jays-rangers-seventh-inning-jose-bautista-bat-flip-russell-martin-throw/

There have been some Canadian SIDS, notably Jack Neumann who you replaced at Calgary, Paul Carson, 2018 CoSIDA 25-Year Award recipient Earl Zukerman, and others, who have paved the way and been big proponents of involving Canadian SIDs into the CoSIDA organization. What impact and influence have these Canadian SID veterans had on your career?
Jack Neumann is my mentor in sports information and, even though the job has changed so much since he retired, I’m still reminded all the time of how much he cared for the student-athletes he was promoting and how that care made him exceptional at his job. Jack was (and still is!) relentless in trying to find other exposure opportunities for our athletes. I still have the privilege of working with Earl “The Pearl” Zukerman, who reminds us of the fundamentals all the time (sidebar: I sat next to Earl when McGill – the school that invented hockey – won its first hockey national championship in overtime. His first response was frustration that everyone was on the ice to celebrate and he couldn’t see who assisted on the goal!). These two guys along with Paul have truly been trailblazers for our profession in Canada and set in motion much of the structure of our communications operations.

What’s an example of one way in which working in CoSIDA or with CoSIDA members has positively impacted your career?
The biggest impact it has had for me is the realization that no matter what your situation is, everyone deals with the same issues – it’s usually just a matter of scale. Everybody has technical issues, everyone has coaches who are easier to deal with than others, and everyone is dealing with an evolving landscape in the media regardless of division or size of institution. I haven’t yet run into another CoSIDA member who wasn’t willing to help or share their knowledge.

Love your Twitter bio where you state first that you are a “Troubleshooter.” Why did you list this first?
At a staff retreat a couple years ago we went through an exercise explaining to everyone – coaches, administrative staff, the entire department – what our jobs are. The best thing I could come up with was to say “my job is to know things.” From knowing our history to a specific player’s stats to the definition of an assist in basketball (it’s different in FIBA!) to how to make StatCrew handle some of our ridiculous-but-we-love-them Canadian football rules, the need to be on top of all these things is a key part of the job. And knowing how things work, often the only one in the department that has such specific knowledge, means you become the go-to for just about everything.

More on the Twitter handle bio … I take it that you are a stickler for grammar, editing and writing. We don’t ever want to say proper writing and grammar are a lost art, but you rarely see anyone in communications/PR mention what you do in your Twitter bio: “Occasionally overbearing on punctuation; believer in the Oxford comma.”
I got my start in this world because I could write, and the written word is still the foundation of just about everything we do. How many times do we hear coaches talk about the importance of the fundamentals? To me, the ability to write well is the fundamental in our profession, and the ability to write well can’t be separated from grammar and punctuation.

Rules are important, if for no other reason than consistency. I’ve had stories submitted that mention game times in three or four different ways (7 p.m. vs 7:00 PM vs 7 o’clock pm). In some ways I do think it’s becoming a lost art. I spend more time on this than I used to with our student staff, and the use of writing tutors by our student-athletes has increased. I will always believe that this stuff is important to telling our stories well, and I’m ok if that makes me a dinosaur (Go Dinos!).

 

Outside of work, we would find you doing what in terms of interests and hobbies?
I have a young family, with this job doesn’t always allow me to spend as much time with as I’d like with them, so it’s important to take advantage of the time we do have. I love to travel, which led to a CoSIDA-inspired tour of all 30 major league ballparks that I wrapped up in 2016 – though I need to get to the new park in Atlanta to keep that current!

We are asking each featured CoSIDA member to contribute a professional development tip – it could be about staffing, best practices for video, what you would tell your younger self, etc. Could you share a professional development tip for the SIDs reading this?
Never stop learning. With the pace of change these days, it’s important to stay on top of things, especially as it relates to deciding which things to adopt and which to stay away from. And don’t be afraid to find out a little more about another area within your department – I was able to shift my career path away from strictly communications because I was interested in operations, finance, marketing, etc.