CoSIDA wants to attract more minorities like Fey, who was born in South Korea and raised in Canada and the Kansas City area. He’s moved across the country having served an internship at Harvard then taking SID roles at Cal State-Bakersfield, the University of Akron, Northwest Missouri State and finally Corpus Christi last spring. Fey can clearly see the lack of diversity in the profession.
Prior to his arrival at Texas A&M-Corpus Christi, Fey led the communications efforts at Northwest Missouri State, which won national championships in football and men’s basketball.
“There aren’t a ton of minorities in our field. I would like to see more,” he said. “I don’t think it’s representative of the student body, especially the student-athletes.”
Fey’s path to college sports communication is similar to some in the profession who were once student-athletes. An injury prevented him from competing his senior year and when he looked at his resume, he realized he didn’t have much on it other than running track. One thing Fey knew was he wanted to stay involved in athletics.
“I didn’t quite know how to get my foot in the door,” Fey said. Fey went to sports information director Jason McCullough, now the head track coach at Fort Hays State. Fey asked, “hey, if there are any opportunities to volunteer, I would love to take a look at what you guys do in sports information.”
Ryan Prickett, currently the sports information director at Fort Hays, took over for McCullough during Fey’s senior and was happy to use him.
“I definitely saw a lot of potential in Marshall when he first came to visit me,” Prickett said. “He was looking for an internship kind of thing, and had an interest in statistics and seeing what goes on behind the scenes. He had a drive to want to learn more.
“He spent a year or so with me learning the ropes. Back then, I didn’t have a lot of graduate assistant help or a full time assistant so Marshall was one of my rock star student workers.”
Neither Fey nor Prickett were trying to make a social statement when Prickett let Fey handle the sports information duties for Fort Hays softball. It definitely wasn’t a Branch Rickey situation of bringing in Jackie Robinson into major league baseball.
“I can’t put my thumb on a reason why,” said Prickett on why there aren’t more minorities in sports information. “It didn’t matter to me the race or gender. I don’t think any of that matters as long as the person is willing to put in the time and is genuinely interested in wanting to learn.”
Fey is thankful that someone gave him a chance and as it turned out sports information was the perfect fit for his career interests. Besides softball, he was give the opportunity to work football and volleyball games. He wrote player bios and took headshots. At the softball games, he was the public address announcer and the official scorer.
“I was doing all the little operations for softball,” Fey said. “I enjoyed it. I looked forward to the challenge. It was fun. Growing up, baseball was my first sport. My dad taught me how to stat Royals games and fill out the scorecard. Having softball be my first experience, I was pretty lucky. It was something I knew and it gave me a sense of responsibility for a sport.”
By the time Fey graduated from Fort Hays, he knew he wanted to make sports information a career. He went to graduate school at Wichita State and to complete his master’s degree before heading to Harvard where he was given soccer to handle.
“It was a sport I had never seen before at the college level,” Fey said. “I had no clue what was going on. It was a great learning experience.”
Being flexible is another trait a sports information director needs because they will be asked to work a sport they might initially have little knowledge about. It’s important to have a willingness to move and try new things in the field.
Later when he was at Akron, his job was new media in which he handled social media duties and video, another new experience, but one that helped him land the job at Northwest Missouri State where he was the head of the sports communication department.
In his five years at Northwest Missouri, the football team won three national titles and the men’s basketball team won its first national title. In fact, in the 2016-17 school year, Northwest Missouri became the only Division II school to win national titles in football and basketball in the same school year.
Fey gained valuable experience handling media requests, helping out with putting on two regional men’s basketball tournaments and loved it.
“It’s weird. I watch Fort Hays, my alma mater play Northwest a lot and you never get into the idea of cheering,” Fey said. “It’s never part of it. You end up cheering for the student-athletes you get to know. The ones you get to sit down with in a hotel lobby or an airport, and you figure out, hey they like watching
The Office or they have similar interests that you have.
“You figure out that a lot of them are great human beings. You figure out that these are the winners in life, the ones who are going to be successful. They are driven. I get a front row opportunity to watch them for four years to perform on the highest athletic stage.”
The biggest appeal in the sports communication field is working with student-athletes.
“We are not the glamorous type,” Fey said. “We are not the ones having video montages of our accomplishments set in slow motion. There are no photos of us because we are the ones taking the photos.
“What we do is writing, numbers. If you are a sports fan and you like writing, doing stats and are organized, it’s a good career for you.”