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Past CoSIDA 25-Year Award Recipients
Steve Levy – University of Maryland, Baltimore County, Associate AD/Communications
2019 CoSIDA 25-Year Award recipient
by Dustin Levy, Reporter at The Evening Sun in Hanover, Pennsylvania
My father,
Steve Levy, has been the associate athletic director of communications at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County my entire lifetime. I never expected the school’s mid-major athletics program to become a household name overnight.
That’s just what happened when the UMBC Retrievers stunned the Virginia Cavaliers in the first round of the 2018 NCAA basketball tournament, becoming the first 16-seeded seed to defeat the top seed in the men’s tournament.
In that historic, improbable moment, I could only think of my father who had toiled tirelessly behind the scenes for decades.
Jerry Milani, employed by Levy in the early 1990s, acknowledged that this was not a unique sentiment following the upset.
“I can’t count how many people that I spoke to the night of the Virginia win whose first comment to me was, ‘I’m so happy for Steve,’” Milani said.
Levy, a 1985 UMBC graduate, was hired out of college as the assistant sports information director. He was shortly promoted to head Sports Information Director at the age of 23 in UMBC's first year of NCAA Division I competition.
A father of four children, Levy is a devoted family man. While the nature his career has sometimes kept him from home, the long-term stability at UMBC has benefited his family in the long run.
The Levys - bottom row, Steve, Lois, Cara (Levy) Pierce and Matthew Pierce, top: Tyler, Dustin, Dan
He applied the same kind of dedication to his career.
Levy “bleeds black and gold,” according to Levy’s former employee Tom Fenstermaker, now the assistant athletic director for communications at High Point University.
“He is fiercely loyal to his alma mater, his family, the people that work for him and the student-athletes and coaches he works with,” Fenstermaker said.
Several of Levy’s former charges have gone onto successful careers in athletic communications. They agreed that Levy’s mentorship played a key role.
“He allowed us to try new things, knowing that not everything would succeed, and would use them as teaching tools,” Fenstermaker said. “I am forever in debt for him on giving me my first full-time position.” Levy also gave Milani his first job out of college, and Milani praised Levy’s patience with a youngster learning the ropes of the business.
“One thing that has always stuck with me is Steve’s management style,” Milani said. “He was the team captain rather than just ‘boss.’ He allowed me the flexibility to take on tasks, make and learn from mistakes and have some creativity without being over my shoulder all the time — exactly what I needed.”
Having surrounded himself with good people throughout his career is a source of pride for Levy.
“My ability to hire and retain some great folks, both full-time and part-time, has served me so very well,” he said. “We've had less turnover than most Division I schools in terms of assistants and, when most left, they went on to outstanding careers in the field or related fields.”
Levy’s favorite part of his job comes from supporting others, whether it’s student-athletes learning to deal with media or interns in UMBC’s Media and Communication Studies program.
David Gansell, the assistant athletic director for communications at Radford, met Levy in his first semester as a student at UMBC. Gansell called Levy “instrumental” in his career path, as Levy encouraged him to become a student worker in the athletics department.
“I learned how to be a true professional under Steve, which is what he is himself,” Gansell said.
Levy’s professionalism came in handy in March 2018.
“Having been in a singular media market his entire adult life was so beneficial to a school as it grew and became a household name around the country,” Fenstermaker said. “The institutional knowledge he has for UMBC and media in Baltimore is unmatched.”
On the day of UMBC’s upset, Levy put his hire Zach Seidel, the director of digital media for the school’s athletics department, in charge of social media.
Seidel’s much-publicized, witty tweets played no small part in the basketball team’s subsequent media attention. The UMBC Athletics Twitter account currently has more than 85,000 follows.
After 30-plus years with UMBC, Levy said he never could have imagined his alma mater trending worldwide on Twitter.
“That I played a role in the success that the university experienced is very satisfying,” he said.