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Past CoSIDA 25-Year Award Recipients
Bill Gorman – Wentworth Institute of Technology, Senior Associate Director of Athletics (Athletic Communications, Compliance, Scheduling, Financial Operations)
2019 CoSIDA 25-Year Award recipient
by Roger Crosley, 2010 CoSIDA Hall of Fame inductee
If
Bill Gorman had taken a different professional route and joined the circus when he left high school in the seaside town of Winthrop, Massachusetts, he likely would have become a ringmaster. Like a ringmaster, for the past 25 years he has both promoted and directed the controlled chaos around him, most recently as the Senior Associate Director of Athletics at Wentworth Institute of Technology in Boston.
In a business where people change jobs with regularity, Bill has been a constant at Wentworth since 1995. He started as Wentworth’s first full-time director of athletic communications, virtually building the office from nothing. His excellence was rewarded with a promotion to Associate Director of Athletics in 2002, and a second promotion to his current position in 2017.
Bill began the journey to his CoSIDA 25-Year Award as a student assistant at Stonehill College where he worked for legendary New England SID Bob Richards. During his final three and a half years as full-time student at Stonehill he was the college’s associate director of sports information as well as the college newspaper’s associate sports editor. Bill was the primary contact for the Chieftains' football, men's and women's basketball, baseball and softball teams and assisted in all other areas of the office.
To honor his quarter of a century of service in the athletic communications field, Gorman will receive a CoSIDA 25-Year Award at this year’s June convention in Orlando.
“Growing up with a love of sports, I hoped to work in the field of athletics in some capacity after graduating from college,” Bill says. “I was a manager of the men’s basketball team at Stonehill during my freshman year and one day I was sent up to the SID’s office to get a copy of a box score. I was intrigued by what that office did. I transitioned from a manager to a student worker that spring and found that I really enjoyed working with all sports. Knowing that my writing could improve and I could learn more than I knew about some sports, I began to focus on working in the field of athletic communications.”
Bill and his family (wife Jennifer and daughters Hannah and Ella) at their favorite vacation spot, Key West.
After graduation, Bill moved to fellow Division 2 institution University of Massachusetts Lowell. While working at UMass Lowell, Gorman was the primary contact for the River Hawks' women's volleyball, men's and women's basketball and softball teams and learned under the tutelage of CoSIDA Hall of Famers B.L. Elfring and Jim Seavey.
“Bill is a natural-born SID,” Elfring says. “When he joined me at UMass Lowell in 1994, he had all the tools. All of us who worked with him back then just knew he would go far in this business. He is a credit to, and role model for, this profession."
"I first met Bill when he was a student intern at Stonehill, and it was evident from that first meeting that he would be destined for greatness in athletic communications and athletics administration,” Seavey says. “If anyone is looking for the consummate role model in terms of professionalism, they need look no further than Bill Gorman. His ability to develop relationships and facilitate visibility opportunities for his student-athletes, teams and coaches have made him an incredibly valuable member of the Wentworth Athletics team for nearly a quarter century."
As active as he was as an undergraduate, it’s no surprise that Bill continued to take on more and more responsibility as his career progressed. In addition to virtually constructing the athletic communications office at Wentworth, Bill is Wentworth’s NCAA Compliance Officer, helps develop and monitor budgets for 17 varsity sports and three administrative areas, coordinates and maintains schedules, contracts and officiating assignments for all sports, and serves as facility coordinator for scheduling game and practice sites. Additionally, the baseball program is a direct report to him.
As if his responsibilities at Wentworth weren’t consuming enough, from 1998-2007 Bill served as a publicist for the Commonwealth Coast Conference, compiling weekly reports in baseball and softball, From 2009-2018, he served as the chair of the CCC sports information directors group and a liaison to the conference office.
Throughout his tenure at Wentworth, Bill has been an active member of the Eastern College Athletic Conference – Sports Information Directors Association (ECAC-SIDA) and CoSIDA. A long-time ECAC-SIDA executive board member, Bill served as that organization’s president in 2008-2009 and remains an ex- officio member of the board. In 2014, ECAC-SIDA honored him with the Irving T. Marsh Award given for dedication and contributions to, and excellence in, the field of collegiate sports information.
Bill’s involvement with athletics has enabled him to be a member of the NCAA Division III Golf (2014-present) and Ice Hockey Rules (2008-2012) committees, and four ECAC Tournament selection committees at varied times from 2002-2016.
If all this weren’t enough, he completed his master’s degree in sports management in 2018.
“To say that over the course of the last 25 years the profession has evolved and changed drastically from when I was a student would be an understatement,” Bill says. “Keeping up is difficult because once you feel as though you’ve figured something out, the next big thing comes along and gets added to the responsibility plate. However, at the end of the day, it’s great to have worked with so many talented student-athletes and coaches over my time and be able to tell their stories.”
Every ringmaster should be so talented.