College Sports Information Directors of America

Jeff Kelly is in his 15th year at Austin College. A 2003 graduate of Syracuse University, Kelly was named the Austin’s Director of Athletics Communications in 2016, after having served as the Sports Information Coordinator for the ‘Roos since 2005. Jeff oversees 18 NCAA Division III sponsored sports as a “one-man shop,” which includes the recent addition of water polo competing in its first season in the spring of 2019. He was selected as the 2018-19 Collegiate Water Polo Association Women’s Division III Sports Information Director of the Year. Kelly was recognized for achieving notable excellence in the field of water polo communications as the women’s team advanced to the Collegiate Water Polo Association (CWPA) Division III Championship title game during the inaugural year of varsity water polo at the institution. Kelly also is a member of the CoSIDA U Committee.

 

We are asking each Recognition Week featured member to provide a professional development tip. What is yours?
It sounds terribly cliché, but when it comes to a tip I’d offer up to people starting out in the profession is it is to never be afraid of asking for help. Whether that’s from colleagues in the sports information field or people on your own staff, more often than not you’ll find people willing to lend you support, and frankly you’re going to discover a lot of the people you work with have skillsets you may not have realized. When it comes to coaches, you have to remember a lot of them started out in the trenches as graduate assistants and whatnot and had “other duties as assigned” just like the rest of us. And a lot of those other duties assigned are going to be related to game day coverage.
 
So, don’t try to take the world on your shoulders, don’t let the stress get to you, and realize that there are people out there willing and able to help and offer either guidance or assistance in more tasks than you’d probably expect.
 
Is there an achievement or contribution that you are most proud of?
I’m not sure that anything in particular stands out in terms of “achievements or contributions,” really, but I’m happy with the way digital and social media has grown and evolved in my time at Austin College, and with the enhancements that I’ve been able to bring to the department with regard to graphics, schedule posters, game day programs, and so on. It was always going to be the natural evolution of those sorts of materials, but I’m pretty happy with the work I’ve done in those areas and helping usher our programs into the digital age.
 
What advice would you give someone who wants to follow in your footsteps?
If I had to offer up advice for people following in my footsteps, I’d tell them that they don’t have to do it all themselves. I’ve been guilty of this more often than not over the course of my time in the profession, partly because it feels like it comes with the territory of being a one-man shop. But it dovetails into the professional development tip, really: the people around you are a lot more capable than you might realize or expect, and that extends to your student workers. You may feel that you’ve got to do everything yourself so that it meets your standards and expectations, but you’ve got to be willing to allow other people to step up and learn and show you that they can contribute to the success of your department and your programs.
 
What have been the most memorable and/or rewarding moments of your career?
The most memorable and rewarding moments of my career haven’t really been things I’ve done personally, so much as it’s been watching the growth of my student workers. I tend to have student-athletes work for me, so those are the people I get to know best on and off the court/field/whatever. When I watch them compete and succeed, knowing them on a personal level, it’s a great feeling.
 
I had one student-athlete work for me for four years. She put more time and effort into her game than basically anyone I’ve ever seen, and battled injuries at various times in her career. I still remember a game early on in her career when she came off the bench and pretty much immediately knocked down a three pointer, and knowing her and having awareness of who she was as a person and what kind of work ethic she had, I was just so immensely proud of her. I continue to be proud of her now that she’s out in the “real world” and beginning her coaching career. 

 

 
Do you have any key mentors or people who deeply influenced who you are, what you believe in and what you’re committed to in your work and life?
I’ve had a couple people who have really influenced me in this profession. From a purely professional standpoint, someone I continue to be grateful to is Dawn Harmon, who gave me my first job in the business when I was fresh out of college and became an intern at the NAIA national office. I’d done sportswriting in high school and grown up on what was then an NAIA campus, but was pretty green when it came to the sports information world. Dawn was great when it came to teaching me what this profession is really all about.
 
My other big mentor is my father, Tim Kelly. He wore pretty much every hat you can think of in college athletics: athletics director, sports information director, men’s basketball coach, women’s soccer coach, natatorium director, and so on, and so on. He was the men’s basketball/women’s soccer coach, SID, and assistant AD at (formerly) Lyndon State College in Vermont back in the 1990s, and then was the AD and coach of a more sports at Mt. Aloysius in Pennsylvania before leaving the business.

Meanwhile, he also managed to run my youth basketball league, coach my AAU team, and also coach my Little League team, among other things. Knowing what I know now about how time intensive even one of those things is, it boggles my mind that he was able to accomplish all of those things (keeping in mind he coached hoops and soccer while also serving as an SID simultaneously). I probably never would have even considered the field of sports information had he not first been part of this world, but then also suggested I look into it after I’d graduated from Syracuse without any real idea about what I wanted to do with my life.

But I’ve always loved writing, I’ve always loved sports, and I’ve been weirdly obsessed with statistics all of my life (when my dad ran that youth basketball league, we kept the scorebooks at home, and one day when I was home sick from school during sixth grade, I decided to figure out the scoring averages of all 60 players in the league, just for kicks), so he was able to point me in this particular direction.
 
Do you have any favorite quotes?
 “How you do anything is how you do everything” is one quote I’ve always enjoyed, but at the end of the day, I might just have to go with “The Dude abides."
 
What might (someone) be surprised to know about you?
I guess what may be surprising to many people who have met me and failed to laugh at my many, many terrible jokes is that I’ve had a solid amount of comedy writing published, both online and then in print. About 10 years or so ago I did some freelance comedy writing that wound up accumulating well over 10 million views online and some of that ended up being part of a book that became a New York Times bestseller in the “non-fiction comedy” genre.