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Russ Blunck (University of Hawai'i at Hilo) – 25-Year Award
by Blake Timm, Great Northwest Athletic Conference Assistant Commissioner for Communications/
CoSIDA Special Awards Committee
 

As the leaves fell on Pacific University’s McCready Field in preparation for another football Saturday, Russ Blunck made his way up to the press box atop the rickety old wooden grandstand. He made sure his stat crew was ready to go, his public address announcer prepped and any media taken care of.
 
He then made his way back down the stairs, threw his cleats and helmet on and took the field with the rest of the Boxers.
 
Such was the life of Blunck as one of an army of student sports information directors that Pacific employed in the late 1970s and 1980s, an experience that turned into a lifelong career in college athletics.
 
Now the sports information director at the University of Hawai'i Hilo, Blunck will receive his 25-Year Award from the College Sports Information Directors of America at the organization’s annual convention in June in National Harbor, Maryland. The award honors a quarter-century in a profession that started with Blunck juggling media calls alongside audibles.
 
“It was a little weird. I would make the game program and then go out and play the football game,” said Blunck, who played both football and baseball for the Boxers. “Then, after the game, my family would have to wait for me because I had to go and write the game story and send it out. Then we would go to dinner.”
 
Blunck worked all four of his years at Pacific in a sports information role, his last two as the head SID. He shared duties with Rusty Hampton, who went on to a long career as a sportswriter at the Jackson (Miss.) Clarion-Ledger, and John Brunelle, who entered the public relations business and now is executive director for the city of Boise, Idaho’s Capital City Development Corporation.
  Blunck came to Pacific figuring he wanted to become a sportswriter, but the Pacific experience changed his mind.
 
“The great thing about Pacific is that I had a chance to do a little bit of everything,” he said. “So I got to do some broadcasting, some radio, some sportswriting, and I also stumbled across the sports information stuff. I worked in it and thought, ‘I like this better. This is more positive. You’re not always trying to dig something up to write a story.’”
 
After graduating from Pacific, Blunck spent two years working in public relations for Athletes In Action before joining the media relations staff for the USFL’s Portland Breakers. In a role reversal, Blunck assisted his friend Brunelle, who had been Blunck’s assistant at Pacific.
 
After the USFL folded, Blunck rejoined Athletes In Action as the PR director for the program’s renowned basketball barnstorming team. He traveled four months out of the year as AIA played in exhibitions against the top Division I programs in the nation. It was during that experience that Blunck learned that the college sports information route was one that could be a good one.
 
“I wasn’t a college SID, but I was working with them all of the time. I learned so much from those folks when I traveled,” Blunck said. “I would make a point, despite how busy we all were, to go to lunch with each of them so I could pick their brains and make contacts.”
 
When AIA moved its headquarters from San Diego to Cincinnati, Blunck decided to stay in the sun. About the same time, the SID position at Point Loma Nazarene University opened. Blunck was hired and, from day one, he was learning on the fly once again.
 
“On my first day at Point Loma I had to do stats and PA for a soccer match. I had never seen a soccer match in my life,” Blunck recalled. “I had to pretend like I knew what I was doing. The match went overtime and I couldn’t hide it. I had no idea what we were supposed to be doing then.”
 
Blunck learned quickly, both on the job and thanks to mentors like Paul Madison at Western Washington and Gary Pine at Azusa Pacific. After six years on the Point, Blunck moved closer to home and took over as the sports information director at Western Oregon. He eventually transitioned into an associate athletic director’s position at WOU before returning to Point Loma for the same role in 2009.
 
After four more years at Point Loma and two years working as a freelance writer, Blunck returned home to Pacific and the sports information business in 2015. His stay in Forest Grove was just for one year when he was tapped to return to Division II and headed to Hawai'i Hilo. Life in paradise is made easier by his wife, Shelly, who assists Blunck with social media and photography.
 
His time at Western Oregon provided Blunck his career highlights. He served as president of NAIA-SIDA and was honored in 2001 with the NAIA’s Ike Pearson Award, just before the school transitioned to NCAA Division II membership. The best memories, however, had nothing to do with the awards.
 
The best memories are with family, particularly sharing the microphone with his father for WOU football radio broadcasts.
 
“I was able to take my dad, who had been my high school football coach, and travel with him for 12 years. I had home games where the whole family came in on Saturdays, having dinner afterward and seeing my kids run all over the field. My mom and sister even sold programs. Those are the type of things you can’t get in any other job,” Blunck noted.
 
On the field, nothing beat the inspirational story of WOU’s Sara Tucholsky who was carried around the bases by two Central Washington softball players after blowing her knee out on what was her only collegiate home run. The moment garnered national attention for both schools and earned Tucholsky and CWU’s Mallory Holtman and Liz Wallace an ESPY Award.
 
But it was less about the moment for Blunck and more about the connections.
 
“It was special because I was working with (Central Washington SID) Jonathan Gordon, who had been a student of mine at Western, but I had also been neighbors with Sara’s mom when I was at Pacific.”
 
Somehow, Russ Blunck’s professional road always has a Pacific connection.